Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

“I need to sit down,” he says.

Whatever little energy he had seems to abandon him with this news. There’re a couple of benches out near the edge of the track. We move toward one of them and sit.

“How did she die?”

“Automobile collision and fire. It was all very carefully staged.”

“When?”

“About two months ago, not too far from San Diego, in California.”

He starts to cough, turns his head away from me, and for a moment seems to collect himself. When he looks back at me he has teared up.

“I take it you knew her pretty well?”

“We were lovers. We had been living together for quite a while. We kept it quiet, mostly for her career.”

“Why didn’t she come to visit you here?”

“She couldn’t.”

“Because of her career?”

“That and the fact that it was dangerous. Though staying away didn’t save her, as you can see. She wanted to come visit. I told her not to. I’m sure people around her thought she was nothing but a flaming ball of ambition. That she just used people and moved on. But she didn’t. She wasn’t that way at all. She had a chip on her shoulder-Olinda against the world. She had a hard outer veneer, but once you cracked through it there was a big-hearted, generous person inside. To those in need. The kind of person who would take in stray dogs and cats, if you know what I mean. I know because I was one of them. When I got bounced from a job all my friends dropped me like I had leprosy. But not Olinda. She kept me going. Used her connections to give me a new start. You never know who your real friends are until you’re down, when you need them. We had some good times,” he says. “Is that what you came here to tell me? That she’s dead?”

“No. I came here to try and get you out, if I can.”

He shoots me a look as if trying to read my mind. “Why would you do that?”

I turn to look at him. “Do you want to stay here?”

“What, do you think I’m crazy? I don’t have a choice. I leave here and the same people who got to her are gonna kill me. Who are you anyway?”

“I told you. My name is Paul Madriani. I’m a law-”

“No. I mean how did you get involved?”

“A long story.” I tell him about the case, Alex and the collision in the desert. The fact that Ives was unconscious, an intended victim who escaped. I explain about the Washington Gravesite, the story they were working on, the PEPs, the politically exposed deposit holders at Gruber Bank. Then the name of the old Swiss banker, Simon Korff, and the fact that he was killed as well.

“Korff saw you, Serna, and Senator Maya Grimes at Gruber Bank. He told me that you and Serna acted as financial go-betweens for some powerful people in Washington. He told me there were boatloads of cash. Now the people who killed Serna and the banker are tidying up the remaining loose ends. Because of what I know, I am on their clean-up list along with a few of my close friends and associates with whom I’ve shared the news.”

“I can’t help you.” He starts to get up from the bench.

“We can help each other.”

“You’re wondering how I stayed alive all this time,” he says.

“You’re holding something they want,” I tell him.

“If you think I’m gonna tell you where it is, you’re wrong.”

“I don’t want to know where it is.”

This gets his attention. “Then what do you want?”

“I want to stay alive. In order to do that I’ve gotta get you out of here.”

“How’s that gonna help you?”

“You have information. They don’t know where it is. That’s why you’re still alive. If I can get you out of here, tuck you away where you’re safe and comfortable,” I tell him, “and I’m the only one who knows where, then I’ll have a piece of your protection. Unless you think you’re better off here?”

He studies me for a moment, a hard direct stare, then says, “Why is it all of a sudden everybody wants me out?”

“Who else?”

“Two days ago they came to me with an offer.”

“Who?”

“A lawyer from the Justice Department. Woman by the name of Parish.”

“Go on.”

“She’s the one told me you were coming. She told me you were going to represent me-that is, if I agreed. She turned off the mic on my side of the glass, told me not to say anything, just listen. She said they were prepared to pay me a lot of money, and let me go.”

“Who was prepared to pay?”

“The government. I’m just telling you what she told me. All they wanted in return was what I’m holding.”

“Bank records?”

He looks at me and winks.

“If you do that and they release you, you’ll be dead in a week,” I tell him.

“Well, at least we agree on that.”

“You don’t have to say anything, but I’m assuming that whatever you have has some kind of a hair trigger on it. Anything happens to you, it goes public?”

“WikiLeaks on steroids,” says Betz. “Their knowledge of that is what keeps me alive. But I’m running out of time.”

“What do you mean?”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You don’t. But then who else do you have? Is there another lawyer you’d like me to contact?”

He shakes his head. “I’m tired and I don’t have much time. I’m gonna have to trust somebody.” Resignation written all over his face. “May as well be you. Besides, what more can they do to me? The fact is,” he says, “I’m dying. They don’t know it yet, but I’m living on borrowed time.”

Iam guessing that he has kept this secret, the fact that he is dying, to himself for so long that when he is finally able to share it with someone, the dam cracks, and he can’t stop talking.

He tells me that his doctor diagnosed cancer in his pancreas just before sentencing, a short time before he arrived here. There was little they could do to treat it because it had already spread. They told him he had perhaps twelve to eighteen months. He is past that now. Betz has been living in hell. He couldn’t tell authorities for fear that they would make his dying days even more miserable trying to extract the information from him, find out where the banking records were. He refused to give it up because he was bitter and angry. Perhaps that’s the only thing keeping him alive.

“They cheated me out of the money,” he says. “And now they’re getting desperate. I wanted it for my daughter.”

“What money? I don’t understand.”

“The Whistleblower Fund,” he says. “I die in here, my daughter will never see a dime. It’s what the lawyer offered me when she told me you were coming. But they’re lying. I know they are. The minute they get what they want, they’ll leave me here to rot.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“A hundred and ten million dollars. They owe it to me.”

As he says it I nearly fall off the bench.

“You’re telling me that’s what she offered you?”

He nods. “I turned state’s evidence against the Swiss bank I used to work for. The information I gave them resulted in almost five thousand offshore numbered accounts being identified. It’s why they put me in here. They knew if they put me anywhere else where I couldn’t be protected, I’d be labeled as a snitch. I’d be dead in twenty-four hours. The taxes and penalties on the hidden accounts were substantial.”

The Internal Revenue Service pays a reward for information based on a percentage of what they recover in revenue. This is embedded in federal law.

“But that’s only part of it,” says Betz. “The bulk of it is owing from the fines against the bank itself. The bank agreed to pay more than eight hundred million dollars in fines to the US Treasury in order to keep their executives out of prison on charges they conspired with the taxpayers to commit tax evasion. They owe me ten percent of what they recovered.”