CURACAO
The black Mercedes limousine hugged the narrow mountain cliff road like a stripe of paint as it drove along North Point on the Caribbean island of Curacao. A thousand feet below, the turquoise sea crashed against the rocky cliff, leaving a frothy white carpet in its wake.
In the back seat, Simon Bennett, a thin, hawk-faced man with dark eyes, flicked lint from the sleeve of his black Savile Row suit. He added up a column of numbers in his leather folder and smiled. He took his gold Mont Blanc and underlined the bottom line: sixty-eight million dollars. All his… very soon.
But peanuts compared to what he was about to show the boss.
The chauffeur turned onto a private road, drove up through a tropical forest and soon stopped at a tall, wrought iron gate. He whispered the day’s password into his cell phone and the gate screeched open. Two minutes later, the limo drove onto a circular drive in front of a massive, white, 1880s Dutch mansion basking in the tropic sun. In front, shirtless men, glistening like ebony statues, bent over gardens of white roses and orchids.
The limousine crunched to a stop on the pea-gravel driveway. Simon Bennett stepped out into and felt a humid breeze sweep off the ocean. The salt air smelled fresh and clean. The mansion door opened and the ancient butler, Karl, as always, nodded at him. Bennett nodded back and followed him inside to the icy foyer.
As they walked down a long hallway, Bennett passed several Picassos and Chagalls, and two Rodin sculptures. The artwork’s owner, the person Bennett came to meet, could afford a warehouse of Picassos. After all, only three people in the world had more money.
Bennett entered the familiar anteroom and nodded at young Fritz, the stern-faced secretary with twitchy eyebrows, diamond stud earrings and dagger tattoos jutting from beneath his white cuffs.
“Good afternoon, Fritz.”
Fritz nodded, as usual, with all the warmth of a pit bull, mostly because he’d never learned the reason for Bennett’s numerous visits. Only two people knew: Bennett and the person in the adjoining office.
Fritz ushered him into the massive office.
“Your visitor has arrived,” Fritz whispered, twitching his way back out and closing the door.
Bennett walked in, his feet gently sinking into the supple floor tiles made from soft Nigerian alligator leather. He sat opposite the massive desk, whose occupant remained hidden behind the salmon-hued pages of the Financial Times. The office was ice cold and dark except where the desk lamp cast pale yellow light on the newspaper. The usual sour musty odor hung in the air.
The person behind the newspaper continued reading, despite knowing Bennett had just traveled two thousand miles. Moments later, as the newspaper was lowered a bit, Bennett stared into the jaundiced eyes of Karlottah Z. Wickstrom.
Now in her late-seventies, Wickstrom’s face was even grayer than two months ago. Her eyes seemed to have been sucked further back into her skull. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead despite the wall thermostat that Bennett noticed was set at fifty-nine.
A drop of blood had dried on her cracked, grey lips. As always, she wore a black pinstriped suit, diamond earrings, a gold necklace with dozens of carat-sized diamonds, and a custom-made Rolex, also diamond-studded. People could retire on the jewelry she was wearing.
Wickstrom was number three among the five richest people in the world, thanks to family money, global real estate, oil tanker fleets and decades of massive profits from insider trading information given to her by a now disgraced, disbarred and deceased U.S. Senator. Conservative estimates put her wealth at fifty-eight billion dollars. Fortune magazine said sixty-four billion. In reality, she had billions more she kept hidden from the IRS.
She had everything she ever wanted in life, except one. She wanted to be the wealthiest person in the world.
And now that Carlos Slim of Mexico has split his seventy plus billion among his family members, Wickstrom had a chance to pass Bill Gates and others and become the richest in the world.
But she needed a few billion more. And she needed it fast.
Karlottah Wickstrom had seven months to live. Incurable amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, was chewing away at her muscles and nerve endings every second. And two months ago, she’d been diagnosed with stage-four pancreatic cancer.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person, Bennett thought.
Finally, she put down the paper and stared at him. “Well… ?” Her eyelids drooped as though she was drugged.
“Medusa goes well,” Bennett said, deciding not to tell her about Milan Slovitch’s failure to eliminate Maccabee Singh in the apartment.
“And our Medusa network?”
“They’ve completed all financial arrangements, all futures contracts, options, both calls and puts, derivatives, all margin buying, everything’s functioning.”
“And the shell corporations?”
“Working perfectly.”
“For all buying groups in all countries?”
He nodded.
“The SEC?”
“Clueless.”
“Says who?”
“My people on the inside.”
“You trust them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I pay them much more than the SEC.”
She blinked real slow, like a lizard.
“Besides,” Bennett continued, “our global process is far too dispersed and fragmented to be detected. Too many buyers from too many countries over too many months. SEC computers haven’t red-flagged anything! And if they do, our IT insiders will quickly de-flag it!”
She coughed, dabbed her lips with a handkerchief stained with phlegm. “Anticipated profits… ?”
“Very good news! Much higher than I anticipated.” He handed her a piece of paper with the terrific profit picture.
Bennett watched her eyes scan down the long column of numbers to the bottom line, a figure much higher than she was expecting. She stared at the number, lizard-blinked again, then bent her lips in a rare smile. But the smile split her cracked lip and spilled a fresh drop of blood onto the paper. She looked down at the blood as though Bennett had somehow caused it and shoved the paper back to him.
What a bitch! No ‘job well done, Simon.’ Just take your bloody paper back!
“Everything depends on Brussels,” she whispered, holding her handkerchief to her lip.
“I understand.”
“And this man, Katill?”
“The best in the world. He’s eluded the police for fifteen years. They have no idea where he is, who he is, or what he looks like. He’s never failed.”
“He better not for what I’m paying him.”
Bennett nodded.
Karlottah Wickstrom turned and stared out the window at the blue Caribbean. “So, I won’t hear from you until after Brussels.”
“No. Not unless something — ”
“Nothing will go wrong, will it, Mr. Bennett?” she said, her voice surprisingly hard.
“No.”
“My investments with your financial institutions amount to over twelve billion, do they not?”
He nodded, sensing her usual threat coming.
“If Medusa fails,” Wickstrom continued, “I will remove the entire amount. Do you understand, Mr. Bennett?”
“Yes.” He hated groveling to the old bitch. But for his sixty-eight million dollar payday he could grovel like a politician on Election Day.
“One last thing,” Wickstrom whispered.
“Yes?”
“When this Katill completes his Brussels assignment – terminate him!”
“I’m not sure anyone can find - ”
“Terminate him!”
“But he only communicates through untraceable e-mail drafts. And he’s disappearing after this assignment.”
She paused. “That’s my point. Your job is to make sure he disappears. Permanently.”
“But - ”
“Your problem!” She pushed a button beneath her desk and the office door clicked open. Wickstrom’s eyes looked back at the Financial Times, letting Bennett know he was dismissed.
At the door, Fritz stood twitching like a rabid animal, ready to pounce if Bennett didn’t leave immediately.
Bennett stood and walked out. At least he was comforted with the knowledge that very soon he’d have more money than he could count. He was also comforted with the knowledge that Karlottah Wickstrom was dying.
Slowly and painfully.