Steven Gore - Final Target

“Hook up with a woman there?”

Matson drew back. “How the devil did you know about her?”

“I asked you a yes or no question about whether you met anyone else in London”-Zink smiled-“and you answered with ‘not really.’”

“She was a helluva lot more than just a hookup. She’s the most amazing woman I ever met. I really wanted to get back there to see her again before Granger needed me in the States, but we got stuck overnight in Guernsey because LaFleur had to redo the Cobalt Partners paperwork and get the nominees to sign off.

“Fitzhugh took me to dinner at this little restaurant called The Best End, right on the bay at the northern edge of St. Peter Port.

“After two glasses of wine, I loosen up a little and I put it to Fitzhugh straight: ‘What’s your angle?’

“He just deflected the question back. ‘I assume it’s the same as yours.’

“I pushed a little harder and said, ‘But you don’t look like a guy who’s doing what you’re doing.’

“Then he sat up and took on a tone like he was on the witness stand. ‘I do nothing other than establish and manage companies and bank accounts. I’ve done my due diligence. I have no reason to believe that the underlying SatTek transactions don’t serve legitimate business purposes. And, more importantly, neither does anyone at the Southeastern Fraud Squad or Scotland Yard.’

“I sort of raised my eyebrows and asked, ‘Aren’t you supposed to wink now?’

“Then he smiled his first smile in the two days I’d been with him, and said. ‘You just missed it.’

“‘Did I miss LaFleur’s wink, too?’

“And he deadpanned back, ‘Apparently.’

“That little back-and-forth changed our whole relationship. From then on, we were like partners.

“After dinner, he led me through the center of town past international banks like Barclays, HSBC, and UBS, and past law firms like LaFleur’s that handle the offshore tax-dodging of companies like ExxonMobil and Halliburton.

“But he didn’t do it to impress me or prove to me that I was in good company. It was more like he had turned into my tutor and wanted me to understand how things really worked out there, and why they worked that way.

“He stopped at the front steps when we got back to the Old Government House, and then turned toward me. I could tell that this was what he’d been leading up to. His voice got real intense.

“‘Not a hundred million dollars,’ he said, ‘but a hundred billion dollars have collected on an island the size of a ten pence. And it’s all because people here know how not to ask one too many questions. What you call deniability in the States has been perfected into an art on Guernsey. While American students are taught the Bill of Rights and the Constitution-the fixed law-here they absorb the science of legal relativity. Illegal? Says who? By whose rules? By what right?’

“Then he smiled again. ‘And everyone learns to wink before they can even say mama.’”

I thought your pal in Washington told you to fold your hands and sit patiently on the sidelines,” Hector “Viz” McBride spoke into his two-way outside of Matson’s forested Saratoga home just before daybreak.

Hector McBride was ready to jump on Matson’s tail. McBride was a big man. The biggest man nobody ever saw. Around Gage’s office he was simply referred to as Viz, short for the Invisible Man.

“He knew that wouldn’t happen,” Gage answered from where he was parked a half mile away.

Viz laughed. “Didn’t we all.”

Alex Z was sitting in the passenger seat next to Gage. He’d come along to talk about the case in a world where, as Viz always told him with a grin, “the rubber meets the road, kid.” Alex Z never knew what he meant, but it always made him nervous.

Gage heard Viz’s engine turn over.

“Time to go to work, boss. Scooby Doo’s just pulling out. He’s in a silver BMW, four-door, 760Li. Heading southeast toward Big Basin.”

Viz reported in five minutes later. “He’s not on his way to his office. Not even toward San Jose. He just turned north on the Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, toward the 85.”

“I’ll swing around.”

Matson indeed took the 85. He drove north until he hit the 280, then the 101 along the bay toward San Francisco.

“He must be going downtown,” Viz said.

Gage and Viz traded places, then followed in silence until Matson approached the financial district.

“Looks like he’s aiming toward Van Ness Avenue,” Gage said.

Matson turned east from Van Ness just after passing the gold-domed City Hall, then swung around the Federal Building and parked in the lot across the street.

“Viz, I don’t want him seeing me yet and I want you out here snapping pictures. I’m sending in Alex Z.”

“What? Me?” Alex Z recoiled toward the passenger window. “You said I could just come along for the ride.”

The man who spent his nights performing onstage before crowds of adoring women was panicking in the wings.

Gage grinned. “It’ll be something you can tell your children about.”

Alex Z shook his head. “Did I tell you I don’t want kids?”

“Too late, hop to it.”

“What do I say if-”

“Say you got busted in an ecstasy case.”

“But I don’t use ecstasy.”

Alex Z’s eyes tracked Gage’s as he scanned his earrings, tattoos, and unkempt hair.

“But everyone will think you do.”

Heart pounding, Alex Z climbed out of the car and followed Matson through the security checkpoint and into the elevator. Matson pressed 11, then glanced over at Alex Z.

“Thanks, I’m going there, too,” Alex Z squeaked out.

Matson stepped out of the elevator on the eleventh floor. Alex Z followed him down the hall into the lobby of the Office of the United States Attorney.

Alex Z took a seat, then waved a clammy hand toward the receptionist behind the bulletproof glass, mouthing the words, “I’m waiting for my lawyer.”

Matson walked up to the counter.

“I’m here to see Mr. Peterson.”

Two minutes later, after the receptionist handed Matson a stick-on security badge and buzzed him in, Alex Z slipped back to the elevator.

“He went into the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Alex Z told Gage when he got back into the car. “He asked for someone named Peterson.”

“Damn.”

Gage noticed Alex Z’s hands shaking. “It wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but good job getting it.”

He radioed Viz. “The little punk is setting up Jack in exchange for a get-out-of-jail-free card. Go down to SatTek. The workers still there are either unemployable elsewhere or real tight with Matson. Try to figure out who’s who, but be careful. We’re going to have to stay in the shadows until we can shine a little light on the inner workings of this scam.”

Z ink looked over his notes from the previous day, wondering how much Matson was holding back. He didn’t glance up, but sensed Matson inspecting his thinning hair.

He knew more was churning in Matson’s mind than was coming out of his mouth. Fifteen years in law enforcement taught him that’s the way crooks were, even when they were telling the whole so-called truth.

Matson studied Zink’s lowered head, wondering how Zink became an FBI agent. Hackett told him that Zink’s career stalled out six years earlier, something to do with a sexual harassment complaint by one of the secretaries. He didn’t even put in his name for promotions anymore. Now just a day laborer, counting the months and years until his retirement, which Matson could see was still a long way away.

Matson decided that thinking of Zink as a rodent was probably a little unfair. Zink didn’t choose his scrawny features; they were a result of his parents unwisely choosing each other. He could only be held blameworthy for failing to mitigate his physical disadvantages. Plastic surgery might’ve helped, Matson thought, but he knew of no operation that could enlarge Zink’s minuscule ears. Matson figured he’d ask his wife. She had personal experience bumping up against the limits of plastic surgery.