Joseph Finder - Power Play

Buck canted to one side. A crimson starburst appeared on his shirt just above his vest.

Muffled screams from somewhere close by: the game room?

Russell, back on his feet, hesitated for an instant, as if deciding whether to reach for his gun.

The fury in his face told me he now understood that I'd removed the primer from the grenade; he was not a man who enjoyed being duped.

I aimed the pistol and fired another round, but then something moved in my peripheral vision.

Buck, summoning a final burst of malevolent strength, had somehow managed to raise his gun. He fired. I glimpsed the tongue of flame at the end of the muzzle, felt a fireball of pain explode inside my right thigh.

The floor came up to hit me in the face.

My forehead and cheekbone felt broken, the pain ungodly. Everything was spinning. I struggled to get upright, finally managed to stagger to my feet, then Russell swooped at me, kneeing my solar plexus.

I sagged, fell backwards, retching, the gun dropping to the floor. I couldn't catch my breath. He grabbed my hair, jerked my head upward, slammed it back down against the floor.

Blindly, I swung at what I thought was his face but connected with something softer: muscle.

I tried to lift my torso at the same moment that he jammed his knee into my wounded thigh, and everything went white and sparkly.

The room and everyone in it danced and jiggered before my eyes, turned liquid. I could see Russell, purple-faced, reach back to slip something out of somewhere (was it his boot?)-and in his fist something glinted: a blade, a long-handled knife, the point of a spear-and he drew it back in his fist with a guttural, bestial roar, aiming directly at my heart, and I was paralyzed, watching Russell in his animal rage, the silvery gleam of the knife blade, and I was too numb to fully grasp that he'd finally won.

I thought: This is the bad wolf.

I tried to plead, but only a grunt came out, and I was slipping away, no longer had the strength to grab the gun out of my pocket, to do anything but-

The top of his head came off.

Red mist. The blast numbed my ears.

He toppled, blood everywhere.

Ali held the Smith & Wesson in a perfect two-handed grip, shoulders forward, an ideal stance.

Her hands were shaking, but her eyes were fierce.

The Canadian police kept us in Vancouver for almost four days.

There were a lot of legal matters to deal with, an investigation to conduct. The two surviving kidnappers were immediately arrested by the Major Crime Unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who actually turned out not to ride horses or wear those funny-looking red uniforms or the silly wide-brimmed Stetson hats.

Buford "Buck" Hogue was evacuated by helicopter to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, where he died in surgery. Travis Brumley was placed in a detachment cell at Port Hardy, then brought before a judge for arraignment.

I felt strange telling the police investigators that, of all the hostage-takers, Travis seemed the least violent and therefore the least guilty. As far as I knew, he hadn't killed anyone. He'd even tried to stop the bloodshed. But as they kept pointing out, Travis was still the perpetrator of a violent crime. He'd be charged with murder, no question about it.

Then again, these were Canadians. I didn't know what Canadians did with murderers. Maybe gave them a very strict talking-to.

The bodies of the victims and the hostage-takers were all airlifted to Vancouver for autopsy. All the rest of us were subjected to some pretty lengthy questioning by the Major Crime Unit team, no one longer than I, after my wounds were bandaged up in the hospital.

Once the exuberant relief of our rescue had worn off, the exhaustion set in. We were all pretty traumatized. In between police interviews and statutory declarations in front of justices of the peace, we slept a lot, talked, called our families and friends.

I couldn't help noticing that Clive Rylance and Upton Barlow and even Kevin Bross were a lot friendlier to me. I suspected it wasn't simple gratitude for what I'd done. These were men who could smell power shifts from miles away, and they all knew that Cheryl had big plans for me. I had become someone they needed to cultivate. They wanted to stay on my good side.

But something seemed wrong with Ali: She'd become quiet, withdrawn. On the second day, I finally got a chance to talk to her alone. We were sitting in a waiting room of the RCMP's E Division headquarters outside Vancouver, a depressing room with linoleum floors and ratty couches and that pine smell of disinfectant I loathed.

"It's eating me up inside," she said. Her eyes were bloodshot.

"What?"

"What I did."

I drew closer to her on the couch, took her hands. "You saved my life."

She stared at the floor, unable to meet my eyes. "I keep replaying it in my head. I'm not like you, Jake. I don't think I'll ever shake it."

"You never will," I said very quietly. "I understand, believe me. More than I ever wanted to tell you."

And then, taking a deep breath, I told her everything.

On our last morning in Vancouver, I was having breakfast by myself in the restaurant of the Four Seasons when Upton Barlow approached my table.

"Mind if I sit down?" he said.

"Not at all."

He noticed the bandage on my face. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"I underestimated you, my friend," he said.

I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't.

"I still find it hard to comprehend that Geoff Latimer embezzled from the company. And on such a scale at that. Just goes to show, you never really know people."

I looked up from my coffee, saw the anxiety in his face. "I think it was more complicated than that."

"Well, no doubt," he said, feigning an offhanded tone. "What-what did he tell you at the end?"

Of course, that was what he really wanted to know: Had Latimer revealed everything? As far as Barlow knew, Latimer had spilled his guts to me. "A lot," I said.

Barlow's cheeks flushed. "Oh, yeah? Do tell."

I leaned close to him. "See, Upton, here's the thing. There's going to be a lot of changes at the top, as I'm sure you know."

He nodded, cleared his throat. "What do you know about these-changes?" He must have hated having to ask me that.

"I know this much: Cheryl's going to look a lot more favorably on those who cooperate."

"Cooperate?"

"You have something Cheryl wants."

He nodded, cleared his throat again.

"Some people will get thrown to the wolves," I said. "You have to decide if you're going to be one of them."

In exchange for Cheryl's guarantee not to hand him over to the Justice Department, Upton Barlow said he'd be only too happy to tell her everything.

About how her predecessor, James Rawlings, had asked his trusted General Counsel, Geoff Latimer, to set up an offshore partnership in the British Virgin Islands.

It was Hank Bodine's idea, actually, but then Rawlings-a shrewd but aggressive investor-decided he wanted to triple the pot within a year and replace the funds in the company's coffers before they were discovered missing. Turn fifty million into a hundred fifty. The ever-cautious Geoff Latimer had warned his boss that trading on margin like that was terribly risky.

But Jim Rawlings was willing to take the risk in order to amass enough untraceable cash for what he liked to call "offsets"-facilitation payments, success fees, whatever. Barlow preferred to call it by its true name: a slush fund for bribes.

To give Jim Rawlings his due, there was a reason why Hammond's foreign business was so strong during his tenure.

It wasn't just the lousy four hundred thousand bucks that Hank Bodine had told Geoff Latimer to wire to an offshore account he'd set up for the Pentagon's Chief Acquisitions Officer. No, it was the millions and millions that Bodine had dispensed to foreign ministers and third-world dictators the world over. Those guys didn't sell out as cheap as U.S. government bureaucrats.