Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

Dad looked at me for a long while as if deciding how much to say. Then: “He tried to contact their founder and CEO, Allen Granger, but Granger refused to talk with him.”

I knew a bit about Allen Granger, the billionaire founder of Paladin Worldwide, but it was limited to what I’d read and heard. A former Navy SEAL from northern Michigan. Rich guy, sort of a recluse. A born-again Christian evangelist, far-right-wing conservative.

“Did he talk to anyone else at Paladin, then?”

Victor nodded. “The head of the Washington office, a man named Carl Koblenz. I think he may be the president of the company – the number two, just under Granger.”

“Carl Koblenz,” I repeated to myself. “Was Koblenz the one who directly threatened Roger?”

“Did I say anything about any direct threats?”

“No, you did not,” I replied.

“You’re planning something,” he said. “I can tell.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t. At least learn from your brother’s mistakes. I don’t want to lose my only remaining son.”

“I’m touched. But that won’t happen.”

“Surely you know the Thirty-Six Stratagems. ”

I shook my head.

“The ancient Chinese art of deception.”

“Oh, right. Sun Tzu. Jay Stoddard’s favorite.”

“Forget Sun Tzu’s Art of War. That’s so commonplace.” He held up a gnarled, age-spotted finger. “Far more interesting than Sun Tzu is Chu-ko Liang. Perhaps the most brilliant military strategist ever. One of his stratagems was to defeat your enemy from within. Infiltrate the enemy’s camp in the guise of cooperation or surrender. Then, once you’ve discovered the source of his weakness, you strike.”

Somehow the setting – the visitors’ room of the Altamont Correctional Facility – made my father’s advice a little less authoritative.

As I walked out of the visitors’ room, I savored a feeling of relief.

Because at that moment I knew that my brother was alive.

Probably meant to kill Lauren, too, not just give her a concussion, Victor had said.

But I hadn’t said anything about a concussion.

All I’d told him was that Lauren had been attacked and had woken up in the hospital. He had another source of information, I was sure. Even though he’d pretended that this was the first he was hearing about it. And given how many times the two of them had spoken in the last month, it was likely that his source was Roger.

If so, that meant that Roger had talked to him after his disappearance.

And thus that Roger was not only still alive but able to receive phone calls. Which meant that he was not a hostage, not a kidnapping victim, not imprisoned somewhere. He was in hiding.

But he was reachable. Since Victor couldn’t receive incoming calls, that meant that he had called Roger.

And that phone number had to be on a list here at the prison. Inmates were allowed to make outgoing collect calls only, to an approved list of up to fifteen telephone numbers.

After I spent a few minutes schmoozing with my new friend, the guard who sat outside the visitors’ room, I confessed to him my concern that my father might be trying to reconnect with some of his old business colleagues. Wasn’t that against prison rules?

He was only too happy to go on the computer and pull up Victor’s approved telephone list. I gave him fifty dollars for his research assistance and thanked him for helping keep my father on the straight and narrow.

As I drove into the Albany International Airport, I called Frank the information broker.

“Didn’t I tell you to be patient?” he said before I could even give him the one number from Victor’s phone list that I didn’t recognize.

“This is about something else, Frank.”

“Yeah, well, I got the information you wanted on that cell number you gave me.”

It took me a second to remember which number he was talking about: the one that Woody, from the cargo company, had given me in Los Angeles. “Great,” I said. “What have you got?”

“It’s a corporate account. Registered to a Carl Koblenz.”

“Paladin Worldwide,” I said.

“You already knew this?”

“I know the name.”

So the president of Paladin Worldwide had hired Woody to steal almost a billion dollars from Traverse Development. That was corporate theft on a truly grand scale.

And then the pieces began to click into place. If my father was telling me the truth – which, of course, wasn’t a given – then Roger had discovered evidence that Paladin Worldwide had been paying kickbacks to the Pentagon. Once they found out what he had, they began to threaten him. He knew they planned to kidnap him, maybe even kill him.

And so he vanished before they had the chance.

But what about that billion dollars? Maybe Paladin, which did a lot of work in Iraq, had learned that Traverse Development – whoever they were – was shipping all this cash back to the U.S., and Paladin had decided to help themselves. A billion dollars was a lot of bribes.

“I sent you your brother’s phone bills,” Frank said, interrupting my reverie. “You ever get them?”

“I did, thanks,” I said. “And I have one more for you.”

Throughout the morning, Lauren found herself checking her e-mail far too often.

She was checking for e-mails from Roger. As foolish as that was.

Give it up , she told herself. There won’t be any more from him.

Stop torturing yourself.

She’d gotten to work late, because she’d had to let in Nick’s friend to overhaul the home-security system. That was okay: Leland was out of the country, so things were slower than usual. Just before lunch, she looked up from her e-mail and saw a man sitting in one of the visitor chairs. She did a double take.

She remembered seeing him come out of Leland’s office. The man was remarkably… well, homely. Ugly, not to put too fine a point on it. His face was deeply pitted with scars, obviously the victim of a terrible case of adolescent acne. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had thinning brown hair, round shoulders, a pigeon chest.

“Hi?” she said.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” the man said. He stood up awkwardly, and a leather portfolio slipped out of his hand and hit the floor. He leaned over to retrieve it, and when he came back up his scarred face was flushed. Looking embarrassed, he approached her desk, extended his hand to shake. “Um, I’m Lloyd Kozak. I don’t know if Leland mentioned me – I’m his new financial adviser?”

Lauren looked over at Noreen, who said, “Hello there, Lloyd.”

“Oh, yes – Noreen, right?” He went over to Noreen’s desk and shook her hand, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” He looked over at Lauren, back at Noreen, seeming trapped between the two women. “I just – did Leland leave any computer disks for me?”

Lauren shook her head. “He didn’t say anything–”

“Oh, sure, right here,” Noreen said, and she produced a manila envelope and handed it to the man.

“Thank you,” he said to her, then he went over to Lauren’s desk and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“No worries,” Lauren said.

The man hurried away.

Lauren waited until he was gone then said to Noreen, “Leland didn’t say anything to me about a financial adviser.”

“I thought I told you about him.”

“Well, yes, you did. But Leland didn’t mention it.”

“Cool your jets,” Noreen said. “Leland told me the guy was going to stop by today and asked me to give him some stuff. It’s no big deal.”

“Well, he didn’t say anything, that’s all.”

“You don’t expect him to explain everything twice, do you?”