Steven Gore - Final Target

“What do you have so far?” Gage asked.

“For one thing, a memo that went out to the local U.S. Attorney’s Offices a few months ago.” Leals chuckled. “It reads like one of those sales incentive deals. You know, the guy who sells the most refrigerators wins a cruise on the Love Boat. And there’s a lot of buzz in the Justice Department about the SatTek collapse.”

“There are lots of fraud cases around-”

“But this one has resonance, maybe because it’s a defense contractor. In any case, it’s the kind that gets stronger and stronger as the clock ticks down. And trust me, you can hear the tick, tick, tick all around Washington.” Leals hesitated, then said, “How about a call if Burch is the fridge that wins somebody the vacation? I promise the Times will give him a fair shake. I’ve never let you down before.”

“You’ve got to give me something,” Gage demanded of the man on the other end of the line a minute later. “You run the division. You know what’s going on.”

“No can do.” The voice was gravelly from too many cigars over too many years. “I can’t even tell you the name of the Assistant U.S. Attorney who’s handling it. They don’t want any bits of the investigation dribbling out. They want an explosion heard around the world.”

“How about a heads-up if Jack’s a target?”

“And find mine on the block? No way, Graham. No fucking way. If there are any leaks in this case, the attorney general will start dusting off polygraph machines.”

Gage glanced toward a refrigerator-sized safe anchored to the concrete floor in the far corner of his office and filled with documents that could end careers.

“Seems to me you’ve got a short memory,” Gage said. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were riding a log toward a political buzz saw-”

“I know. I still owe you, but this isn’t the time. All the decisions in this case are coming from the top-they’re bypassing the Criminal Division altogether. It’s in the hands of this new Corporate Fraud Task Force. That means the attorney general and the FBI director. I’ve got no say about whether Burch gets indicted.”

The man paused. Gage imagined him gazing out of his Justice Department office window toward Pennsylvania Avenue.

“It’s a new world,” the man finally said. “The public is sick of lawyers skating in these fraud cases, and the White House is listening. Somebody like Burch-I’m not saying Burch-but somebody like him is the perfect guy to hang a noose around. He’s at the top, he’s made a bundle, and he’s an immigrant-the politically correct guy to take the fall for the crooked lawyers behind all of the other scams. He’s the ideal target.” The man chuckled. “Sort of a sacrificial kangaroo.”

“You’re leaving me no choice but to-”

“You helping Burch is like a surgeon operating on his own brother. Not a smart move. Good intentions in the wrong place gets people into trouble. It’s already gonna be a huge indictment and I’d hate to see your name add to it, charged with obstruction. If I was you, I’d fold my hands in my lap, sit quietly, and wait for the show to start.”

“Look, he’s had a tough-”

“And I feel bad for him, and his wife. But this happened long before he was shot. If he was part of it, he was part of it. If he wasn’t, he wasn’t. You start tearing into this thing yourself, Graham, and you’re the one who’s going to get torn apart.”

W as Fitzhugh a competent guy?” Zink asked Matson as he bent a pizza box and stuffed it into a trash can in the windowless, timeless debriefing room. Zink had learned over the years that pizza to a snitch was like a warm bottle to a baby.

“When I first met him,” Matson said, “I thought he was just a pipsqueak. But I found out real fast that he sure knew his business. Like perfection in motion. A guy like that could make a fortune in the States. Not like Burch, but still a lot of money. Say you want to set up a corporation in California. You know what you have to go through? How much you got to spend on lawyers and accountants? Sure, you could buy one of those do-it-yourself kits. But you know you’re gonna get sued. Everybody gets sued. You think the one-size-fits-all is gonna protect you?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Damn right. So you gotta start with a slick lawyer like Burch. A guy that creates the strategy. And he’s gonna charge a bundle. You know what his hourly rate is? You got any idea? Eight hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour. You know what that is a minute?”

“No.”

“I figured it out. Fourteen dollars and fifty-eight cents. One minute. But you’re not paying for a couple of minutes. You’re paying for hours and hours and hours. Burch’s like a quarterback who calls his own plays and can throw the long bomb. The guy you pay to see. Fitzhugh? He’s more like a small running back that eats up the field, two, three yards at a time. Bang, bang, bang.”

Matson took a last bite of pizza, then leaned back in his chair. His eyes glazed over for a few moments, then he shook his head and blinked hard. “The whole thing was such an adrenaline rush, I sometimes wonder if I really got into it for the money in the first place.

“We flew on a turbo-prop to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The whole thing was right out of a movie. Pin-striped suits and black briefcases; even the women. As we circled over the English Channel to land you could see the coast of France. Like a knife edge.

“The island’s outlying areas were as open and green as fairways, but St. Peter Port was all granite buildings and narrow cobblestone streets. Little wind tunnels. Right in the middle and sitting high up like a fortress was the Old Government House Hotel where we stayed.

“After we checked in, Fitzhugh took me to a firm of solicitors and introduced me to a partner, Charles LaFleur. Looked like Fitzhugh’s twin, but twenty years older.

“LaFleur had three binders lying on his desk. The incorporation papers for companies he’d already set up. Azul Limited in Panama, Blau Anstalt in Liechtenstein, and Cobalt Partners in Guernsey. They were just empty shells waiting to be filled.

“Each one was already staffed with fake directors. They call them nominees. For Cobalt Partners, they were bartenders on Sark, another one of the islands. The nominees don’t make any decisions, they just sign papers that LaFleur puts in front of them. No questions asked. Open bank accounts. Transfer money. They don’t know why they’re signing or who the real owners are.

“It’s all a game of just pretend. But if you don’t play it, you can’t operate out there.

“LaFleur said that for extra insulation-that’s exactly what he called it, insulation-he wanted to put Fitzhugh down as the real owner.

“Right away my antennae went up and locked on. Fitzhugh had said that the offshore world was about trust, and I didn’t know these guys from Adam.

“I realized right then that I needed to control at least part of it myself. I knew it was a risk to have my name on anything, but I told them I wanted Cobalt Partners for my own.

“Fitzhugh jerked back and looked at me like I just put a gun to my head. But we both knew he had no choice but to go along. After all, he’s the one who said I was the pope.

“But from the moment we walked out of there, and as much as I refused to think about it, I knew I was eventually going to get scalded.”

Zink rose from behind the desk and walked to a file cabinet. He returned with a stack of bank account records. He laid them out in front of Matson.

“Whose idea was it to set up the Cobalt bank account at Barclays in London?”

“Mine. I like the city and I was thinking I might want to…” Matson’s face reddened as his voice faded.