The Outer Circle (The Counterpoint Trilogy Book 3) (2 page)

New York, USA

Robert Treadwell looked at the latest audience measurement numbers on the projected screen. He was still the most important news source person in the country. Turned out that in the age of addressable on-demand entertainment and millions of – mostly unpaid – reporters and content creators, people craved a certainty of a popular, timely and entertaining viewpoint. The Treadwell report provided this, artfully using all possible and, preferably, instantaneous media avenues. Any story, any tip was quickly picked up and distributed in twenty words or less, followed by a funny or biting commentary as appropriate. Scandals were the ultimate traffic drivers. Treadwell had his detractors that referred to him as a “moron with a website,” “sleaze purveyor,” and a “champion of idiotocracy.” He did not care – entertainers and politicians have been lining up for coverage and advertising money’s been rolling in.

Hearing a delicate knock, Treadwell turned off the external projection on his phone. The best part of the day was coming up. Treadwell had a predilection for girls. Many powerful men did. Some paid a heavy price, potentially presidency for the likes of Elliot Spitzer and Gary Hart. But Treadwell was careful. He had to be because in his line of work he could not afford to become a fodder for jokes. And because he liked his girls to be young. Really young. The procurement was done through his trusted sidekick Brian. Never saw the same girl twice. Sources and flats have been changed all the time. This was the first time that Treadwell used this particular flat on Park Avenue.

The girl was a bit older than he preferred, probably pushing twenty. Treadwell made a mental note to discuss this with Brian. But he forgot the thought soon thereafter, the girl was spectacular. Her body, her fingers, her throaty accented voice. Worth every penny. As she was dressing up afterwards, Treadwell was contemplating whether to break the rules and see her again.

Suddenly, the girl picked up a remote control on the side of the bed and a projection screen appeared on the opposite wall. Dumbfounded, Treadwell saw a super-high-resolution image of himself and a girl using a dildo on him.

“Should I turn on the sound?” the girl appeared fascinated watching the screen.

“What the fuck!” Treadwell was not amused. “Brian!”

A side door opened and a man walked in, carrying a manila folder in his left hand.

“I am afraid that Brian can’t be here at the moment,” he said. “Brian is... how shall we put it... tied up.”

“Who the hell are you?” Treadwell was trying to cover his nakedness with a pillow.

“It does not really matter, does it?” sang-song the man. “And there is no point in covering yourself, Mr. Treadwell. Everything’s been captured, Natalya knew exactly where the cameras are.”

“How much?” Treadwell surly figured he’d have to pay up.

“We don’t want your money, Mr. Treadwell. We might even pay you. Purchase some targeted advertising on your channels perhaps?”

“So what the hell do you want?”

“Before we get to that, let’s look at some pictures, shall we?” the man started extracting large photos from the folder. “Here’s a subject from last November. She was fifteen at the time. Still is. Here’s one from July, fourteen years old. As a matter of fact, you have a bit of history with underage girls, Mr. Treadwell? We have a dossier going back to 2017, when your star just started to rise.”

“What do you want?” this time defeated.

“We’ll be in touch, Mr. Treadwell. You can keep these as a reminder,” the man carefully placed the manila folder on the bed.

Hermossilo, Mexico

Maggie sat on the balcony and closed her eyes, taking in the sounds and smells of an unusually warm spring night, the lazy bantering of two women on the street below, neighborhood kids laughing and running around before going to bed. David was still working on his computer and she appreciated these few minutes of solitude.

Almost two years of running. Immediately after the 2022 events, she and David spent a couple of months in Playa Del Carmen, then moved to Mexico City to hide in the giant swarm of ten million people. They started carefully withdrawing small sums of money from the accounts where they transferred the three million dollars they took from Nemzhov, moving them into local banks. Thanks to Alejandro’s family and to Javier, they had multiple sets of documents.

That would have been their end, if not for the protection that Alejandro’s family extended to them. Someone came into one of the local banks they were using, asking questions. The manager knew enough to send the word to the family. David and Maggie left the same day for Bucerias, a small town north of Puerto Vallarta. They used Canadian passports to pass as another rich Canadian couple spending their winter months in warm climes. The three months in Bucerias were her favorite time. They rented half-a-house from a free-spirited American woman. Maggie loved the gentle nights, with soft wind rustling in the palm trees and bright moon glistening on the bay. She and David had fallen into an easy going routine; they made love in the morning, went to the beach, swam and suntanned, ate, came back to the house to work until early evening, went for a walk, ate dinner, talked and made love again.

An experiment had been set up, transferring money from one of the accounts to a small one-branch bank in the Caribbean. Less than a day later, new faces appeared in the Caribbean town, watching the bank. An attempt with another account had the same result. There was no way to get the money out safely, all they had was what they withdrew in cash and deposited directly. Less than three hundred thousand dollars. And now most of it was gone.

They had to run from Bucerias when the word came from the local police that someone started asking questions about them. There were no more carefree stays. Oaxaca, Guatemala, Mazatlan, Monterrey, back to Mexico City, Hermosillo... they moved wherever Alejandro’s family could provide them with temporary protection, stayed for two-three months, moved again. David was feverishly working on the parts of Schulmann’s data that has not been decoded yet. She found it difficult to motivate herself; the information that they thought would change the world had not done much. Yes, some of the guilty parties lost their jobs but many did not; very few went to jail; the protests in China had been brutally suppressed. And the massive volume of disinformation ha drowned what she and David risked everything for. Their names had been dragged through the mud.

Nothing had changed. But David wouldn’t give up, and she just could not bring herself to tell him that she was losing hope. So when he finally broke through and uncovered another batch of names, high-profile, dangerous names, she perhaps was not as thrilled as she should have been. She saw pain in his face and tried to inject more excitement into her voice, but he lowered his eyes:
“You think it’s all been for nothing, don’t you?”

“No, love, I am just tired. All the running, all the setbacks...”

He looked at her, then to the side, spoke into the void:

“I am sorry. Perhaps we should have accepted Nemzhov’s offer two years ago. I wish I had not convinced you to publish the Schulmann’s research and go on the run. I know you want a child, a normal life.”

She came close, took his face into her hands:

“Love, please don’t think this way. You have not convinced me, I made this choice. Yes, I wish things have been easier, I wish we did not have to live out of suitcases, always on the run. But that’s how it is and we are together and alive. Now, what are we going to do with this new information? Who can we trust? Just trying to distribute it on the internet won’t do any good after all the lies that’ve been published.”

David needed additional data, more than they had in Schulmann’s file from two years ago. Who could have access to such information? One idea he had was to get in touch with Jim Brobak, the FBI friend of the late John Platt, who tried to help them two years ago in Texas. But how? They ended up contacting Oleg. Since Playa Del Carmen, they’d only seen Oleg twice but he’d been carefully staying in touch. It was Oleg who came up with the idea of smuggling them back into Los Angeles. In truth, there was no choice. It was dangerous to go into unknown, but even more dangerous to stay. Alejandro’s family has been shielding them in Mexico out of promises made back then. But Oleg knew that inside the large and powerful family different voices had been getting more vocal, arguing that the risks of protecting the two fugitives became too great. They had to leave Mexico and return to the very place they barely escaped two years ago.

Maggie got up, went back inside, floorboards creaking under her bare feet. David turned around, smiled at her.

“Rosa, come inside! Rosa!” a voice of their landlady from below. “Come in, you’ll catch a cold!”

“No, grandma, I won’t,” a laughing voice of a precocious four year old.

Maggie’s heart gave a pang. The day they moved in six weeks ago, cheeky Rosa came in and introduced herself like a tiny adult. There was an immediate affection between Maggie and the child. Soon, she’d have to give up Rosa.

Richmond, Virginia, USA

Three men and a woman gathered around a small conference table in a richly adorned business office with a panoramic view of the city.

“I brought you here to discuss a very important project for our company,” opened the owner of the office. He was the youngest of the four, in his early forties, tall, clean cut, impeccably dressed, straight posture alluding to a military background.

“Erik, we just won the FBI contract worth almost half a billion in annual revenue,” smiled the woman. She looked to be in her sixties, the oldest at the meeting. “You are going to top that?”

“Have faith, Nancy. I don’t mean to diminish the FBI win – you’ve done an amazing job on that – but this is bigger.”

“Well, are you going to tease us or come out with it?” growled one of the men good-naturedly. He was the only one in the room that did not carry himself with a military bearing. If anything, he was substantially overweight, his stomach spilling over a belt buckle, his face sweaty and a color of a raw steak. “Because unlike you, a high-flying CEO, I have some grunt budget work to do. Making sure that this company of yours can actually pay its bills.”

“I know Dean, I know, the CFO makes trains run on time. All right, here it is: I just agreed to provide protection and security services for John Dimon!”

The man called Erik paused for an effect. But his listeners appeared to be more flabbergasted than enthused.

“You mean the presidential candidate, the head of the
Spirit of ’76
party?” asked the man who’d been silent so far. Despite a rainy day outside, he was dressed in a white cotton suit. His appearance and a slight drawl reminded one of an actor playing a pre-Civil War Southern gentleman, except for his very hard eyes.

“Yes, that’s the one,” confirmed Erik. “Blair, you don’t seem to be excited about it.”

“I am not excited about it either,” the fat man spread his hands. “Personally, I like John Dimon and plan to vote for him, but how are we going to make money on this? And I wonder how it will impact the rest of our business. Dimon is not an establishment candidate, we risk antagonizing some of our potential customers.”

“Dean, I promise you that we’ll be making more money on this than on any of our projects, including Nancy’s beloved FBI contact! And as for impact on the rest of our business, we were not planning to bid on any new government business for the next few months and we will not have the resources for that anyway.” He turned to the man in a white suit. “Blair, who is your best overall program management guy, one who can handle difficult people and is well respected within the company?”

“For protection services, that’ll be Bob Johnson,” replied Blair. “He’s done some difficult projects for us.”

“OK, I’ve met him. Put any resources he needs at his disposal. And Nancy, you provide any surveillance assistance that Bob will require. This will be our priority one project.”

“But why, Erik? Why are we taking this risk?” Nancy shook her head in puzzlement.

Erik jumped up, walked back and forth impatiently, turned to his listeners with a pained expression:

“Look, it’s not just about FreedomShield! This country is on the wrong track! We all know it! We all want someone like John Dimon to come in and get us back on the right path!” – punching the air with his index finger – “This is our chance to help make this happen. We’ll get paid well in the process and, if Dimon wins as we all expect him to – he is far ahead in the polls now – we are golden!”

Erik calmed down, sat back at the table, smiled:

“OK, time’s a-wasting. Let’s get back to work. Blair, come back with Bob Johnson once you get him.”

As the visitors were leaving, Erik called out to Dean:

“Dean, hold on a minute. Close the door.”

Dean shut the door after the other two and turned back:

“Yes?”

“Dean, I’ll need you to set up a few special project accounts. Give them some unrelated names.”

“Why?”

“Most of the payments will not be coming from the Dimon’s campaign. There is no reason to risk disclosure on how much we’ll be getting paid for this. I want you to handle this personally, don’t delegate.”

Dean pulled a handkerchief out, wiped beads of sweat off his now even redder face, sighed uneasily:

“OK, Erik.”

The younger man turned back to the window, signaling that the conversation is over. Dean began leaving, hesitated:

“Erik?”

“Yes, Dean?” a hint of irritation.

“What if Dimon loses? We’ll burn our bridges in Washington...”

Dean left the phrase hanging in the air, as to emphasize the gravity of the decision.

Erik looked at the other man a few moments longer than necessary:

“Well, Dean, we better do everything in our power to make sure he wins then... everything."