Марк Грини - One Minute Out

“When do we leave for Dubrovnik?”

I’ve turned on the highway through high hills towards mountains in the south. “We’ll be there in a few hours.”

She nods and we drive on.

I’ve made it out to her like our plan will be much easier than I envision things, because if Dubrovnik is, in fact, the next stop along the pipeline, the people who run this thing are going to be looking for us there. The same guy—me—shot up one of their way stations and then snatched one of their police conspirators, so it’s no great leap to assume I’ll turn up again at the next stop in the line.

If they normally had five guys with guns around the girls, now they will have fifteen. If they would normally send two guys to pick up Talyssa when they realize she’s on to them, now they will send six.

My involvement in this whole thing has made it more difficult for everyone—victim, friend, and foe alike.

Nice work, Gentry.

This is going to get complicated, and it’s just me and the accountant with the missing sister against an opposition we haven’t even identified yet.

Yeah, any way you look at it . . . this blows.

FOURTEEN

Kenneth Cage sat in a plastic chair, staring at the girl dancing in front of him. She moved with grace, but with a look of intensity on her face that would tip off an expert that she was struggling to remember her moves.

She stopped and bowed, and the crowd clapped politely.

Ken Cage, on the other hand, stood up and cheered.

Juliet was his twelve-year-old daughter, after all, and as far as he was concerned, she was magnificent.

Soon he sat back down and watched the next girl at his daughter’s ballet recital take the stage.

He knew he’d be stuck here for another hour, but just as he steeled himself to endure the rest of the damn dancing, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Heather glared at him as he looked down to it, but when he saw who was calling, he turned away from her and left the room.

His bodyguard moved into position behind him, radioing the driver of the Mercedes outside that the principal was moving.

But Cage didn’t go to the G-Wagen. Out in front of the Hollywood dance studio, he moved over to a bench and answered the phone in an angry tone, while his bodyguard remained a few feet behind.

“Not the best time, Jaco.”

“Sir, I need this encrypted.”

The American sighed, tapped a couple of keys that encrypted the call on his end, and said, “What’s up now?”

“It’s about the Balkans.”

“I told you to handle that.”

“I need someone who can make a decision, sir.”

Cage sat on a bench by the parking lot, his head sagged. “Dammit,” he said, while looking around to make certain no one was in earshot. “What’s the fucking problem now?”

Jaco’s voice was its usual businesslike tone. “It was thought the killings in Bosnia were associated with an assassination attempt on the man running the way station. Something unrelated to the pipeline.”

“Some uber assassin, right?”

“Yes, sir. But if that were the case, we’d expect that man to be long gone from the area where the killings happened, and we’d also expect him to pose no more threat to the pipeline.”

“But?”

“But by all reports, the man who killed Babic the other day also kidnapped the Mostar police chief this afternoon, local time.”

The American replied with, “And why does that interest me in the slightest?”

“Because Chief Niko Vukovic worked for the pipeline.”

Cage felt hot anger welling within him. “So . . . you are saying someone is fucking with my operation.”

“It seems that way, sir. The entire police force in the Mostar area is looking for their chief, of course, so I hope to have news before long. If he’s recovered alive, then—”

“He’s been grabbed by an assassin. Finding him alive doesn’t sound very likely, now, does it?”

“No, sir. But even if he isn’t recovered alive, we can hope for clues. Obviously, the cops will turn the area upside down looking for the assassin whether he keeps Vukovic or kills him and dumps the body.”

Cage said, “Is this something Kostopoulos can handle?”

“No, sir. I know a lot about this mysterious Gray Man. He’s just too good.”

“What is it you want from me?”

“I want to get my team together. Fly into Dubrovnik, the next stop in the pipeline. It will take some time; my men are spread out all over the world right now. But we’ll get in there and protect the shipment, keep an eye out for this American bastard.”

Cage waved a hand in the air. “Approved. If the Greek and his Albanians can’t get it done, then it’s up to you and your boys. I’ll be at the market in Venice in two days. I sure as hell don’t want this maniac showing up there. This gets dealt with now, and it gets dealt with hard! Got it?”

The pause was short, and the reply bore all the deference of a military man serving his master. “Yes, sir. I’ll get the boys together.”

Kenneth Cage hung up his phone, shaking his head in disgust. He wasn’t worried about his overall operation in the slightest. It was strong and secure, and the men, women, and organizations under him in the Consortium would do what needed to be done. No, he was bothered by the fact that his day had been sullied with talk of hit men and kidnappings.

Cage didn’t consider himself a criminal. Just one hell of a good businessman.

A partner in a Hollywood production company valued north of eight hundred million dollars, he was also senior partner in a hedge fund with assets under management seven times that.

With a business degree from Wharton, he’d gone into banking in the eighties and computer programming in the nineties, he had been at the vanguard of virtually all the advances that technology had brought to the finance industry in the past three decades, and he’d made a name for himself—and a fortune along with it—exploiting the markets with the latest electronic tools.

He created and managed a hedge fund at the height of the dot-com bubble, but with the bust his fortunes evaporated overnight. This hit him hard, not because his investors lost mightily but because he’d grown accustomed to both the lifestyle and the sense of personal power that came along with his riches. After a single lean year he decided, without a moment’s guilt or indecision, that he would regain his stature by any means necessary.

Cage used his vast skill set in computers and finance to begin laundering money. First for the doctors and lawyers who were his hard-hit fund’s clients, helping them protect endangered assets from their wives, their business partners, and Uncle Sam. But soon he developed both tactics and processes that could clean dirty money on a much larger scale.

By the stock market crash of ’07 he found himself recession proof, because he was hard at work for drug cartels, third-world dictators, high-end corporate and government embezzlers, even revolutionary and terrorist organizations, along with a host of other shady clients.

Through his efforts, aircraft and even cargo ships full of palletized cash were turned into sound, legal assets, and though he’d gone to great lengths to keep himself safe and out of the eyes of police, those in the underworld knew that there was a shadowy man in the United States who could get their massive amounts of currency turned into heavy balances held in untraceable offshore accounts or into hard assets like property, luxury cars, and jewelry.

Cage had the brains, the know-how, and the sheer creativity necessary for his work, and he loved it as passionately as he loved Heather and his three kids.

For the first several years that he worked in illegal finance, he was more than satisfied to play the exciting shell game of money laundering, and play it better than anyone else.