Andrew Gross - Reckless

Hauck stared closely at the photo. He felt a fist clench in his gut. “It is him.”

“How can you be sure?”

“That’s the same satchel he had with him the night I followed him to the restaurant and got his DNA.” He passed the photos back across to Naomi with a shrug. “That’s him.”

“Look, until we know for sure what the hell is going on, all of this-Thibault, Kostavic, whatever he may have done-is not to be shared, you understand?” She tapped her nail and it brushed against his hand. “Especially when it comes to other investigative arms of the government. Or Merrill Simons, for that matter. That’s clear, right?”

Hauck met her round, gray eyes. “It’s clear.”

He had known for a time this would lead somewhere. When he first had doubts about Talon. When he pressed Naomi to let him remain involved. Maybe that day when he first saw April Glassman’s face on that screen.

“You believe Thibault recruited these traders, don’t you? To go off the reservation, so to speak. To drive their firms under.”

“It all fits.” The Treasury agent’s eyes shone with the same intensity. “Both of them were used to earning millions; both were bonused largely in their own company stock, stock against which they had borrowed heavily to cover their lifestyles and that was now underwater. Both had margin calls against them just a few days away.”

“So where’s the money trail?” Hauck asked. “If Thibault bribed them, it had to be for something big.”

“It was something big.” She grinned. “Depending, of course, on your definition of big.” She reached back inside her case and this time came back with a photocopied, handwritten note. The stationery letterhead read James Donovan. She slipped it across the table to Hauck. “Leslie Donovan came to me. A couple of days after you went to see her. She didn’t know what to do with this. She had no idea what it meant, only that her husband was seemingly into something she couldn’t explain. She said you had asked her if she honestly thought he had taken his own life…”

Hauck read it. The note was written in an awkward, harried script.

Les, my love, I’ve asked Bill to give you this in the event anything should happen to me and I’m not there. Not being with you and Zach is the most painful thing I can ever imagine. Not seeing him grow into the person I know he will become. Not being there to take care of you. Listen-I’ve managed to put away some money. Money that can help take care of you, in the event I’m not around. It’s in an account that no one knows about at the Caribe Sun Trust on Grand Cayman Island. The account number is 4345672209. The account is in both of our names. You may remember, I had you sign something once. The pin code is Zachy. (Corny, I know!) Your signature is on file.

Whatever you do, this is money that must not be explained and cannot, cannot be brought back to this country. I can’t go into it other than to say it’s all a measure of my love for you. I’m hoping this is a letter you will never have to read, but if you do, don’t tell anyone. I’m not proud, but it’s to protect you when I’m not there.

The letter went on to talk about his love and it was signed Jim.

Hauck put it down. “So what’s your definition of big?”

Naomi pushed him another photocopy. This time, it was a bank statement, from the Caribe Sun Trust.

Hauck scanned down the list of deposits until he hit the bottom. It showed over eight million dollars in the account.

Hauck whistled. “Works for me…”

“It was probably only a down payment,” Naomi said. “This is a guy who was teetering on the edge financially. A guy with a six-thousand-a-month apartment in New York and two vacation homes who had leveraged himself heavily against his company stock, which in the near term had no prospect of ever coming back. A guy whose future earnings flow was up in the air. Why would I not be surprised to find a similar account somewhere when we dig into Marc Glassman?”

Hauck nodded. He would definitely believe it. “But you think there was a full-out conspiracy here. There’s more?”

Naomi looked at him. “Yeah, there’s more. But now we’re getting into things that someone like me shouldn’t be telling someone like you. You understand?”

He nodded. “I understand.”

She told him about the call intercepted from Hassan ibn Hassani to Marty al-Bashir in London. The sudden shift of one of the largest investment funds in the world, which started the plunge of the financial markets the very next day, building on the mortgage debacle, fears of Fannie and Freddie failing, the world creeping to the edge.

Glassman and Donovan just gave it the final, invisible nudge.

“Someone was paying them off. Someone used them to start the slide in motion. You want to hazard a guess, when we fully dig into Thibault’s accounts, where the flow of all that money originated from?”

It was huge. If this was an organized, plotted attack, it was terrorism. Poor April, he thought…How could she have known the forces behind what happened? Her family never had a chance.

“So why me?” Hauck asked finally.

“My people don’t want an interagency thing on this until we know more. If any of this leaks, it’s the sort of thing that would only create more chaos in the markets. Plus”-the agent’s gaze softened and for the first time she didn’t try to hold back her smile-“you seemed to desperately want in.”

Hauck smiled back. “I suppose I did, didn’t I? Look, my 401(k)’s in the shitter as much as the next guy’s, Agent Blum, but for me, this isn’t about the markets. It’s not about what happened to Wertheimer Grant. These people did what they did. But innocent people were killed to hide what they knew. One of them was a friend.”

“I understand.” The Treasury agent nodded.

“That said”-he shrugged-“I have been known to stumble into a well-concealed conspiracy every once in a while…”

She nodded, pleased. “So I’ve heard.”

“The first thing is to locate Thibault-Kostavic,” Hauck said, correcting himself. He looked at her.

“I have my people tracing him out of Paris.”

“Any luck so far?”

“Not yet.” She shook her head. “It’s a big world.”

“It is…” Hauck’s mind flashed back to something he remembered from weeks before. “Luckily for you, I think I know where he is.”

The easy part was grabbing a few days from the office.

He was owed that much. Foley had even suggested it. Not to mention he had just brought in a fat new account.

The hard part was squaring what he was about to do with Annie.

Not telling her the truth behind what he had let himself be drawn into. The reason her son had been attacked. About where he was about to go. And why.

He’d wanted in all along, hadn’t he? If he was honest.

From the start.

Hauck sat on the deck in the dark with a beer, looking over the sound. He followed the flickering lights of planes descending into LaGuardia across the water. He put his moccasins up on the railing.

It was one of those shifting lines in the sand where you had to make a call. What side you came down on. Who you fought for.

Who you let down.

April deserved that much, didn’t she? He thought back to the last time he had seen her and remembered her beaming face. This is Evan, Ty…

Then the wind suddenly shifted and the line was gone all over again. He knew why he was doing it. Why he was putting it all at risk. His job. Everything he had grown comfortable with.

Annie.

He knew why, and if he was honest with himself he could say it now.

It wasn’t all buried in the past.

It was his last time there-at the group. Dr. Rose had given him the okay to leave. His obligation to the department was complete. For weeks, he’d been feeling restless, boxed in. Ready to get on with it again. He’d grown to accept that there were simply things that had happened. Events out of his control. An unguarded moment where fate had intervened.