Джозеф Файндер - Vanished

“Maybe with the container of cash in Los Angeles. You could start there. I’m sure Allen Granger would love to hear about that.”

“So much ground to cover.”

“I’ll bet. Or else we could talk about my brother’s attempts to extort money from you. I’m sure it seemed a lot easier just to get rid of the guy than risk exposure of all the kickbacks you give the Pentagon.”

He shook his head, looked mildly amused. “Ah, well, let’s see.” He held up the picture, then let go. It fluttered and slid across his desktop, finally landing on the floor. “First of all, I have no idea who this fellow is. The other one is obviously your brother.”

“We’re running a search right now,” I bluffed. “The PATRIOT Act makes it much easier these days. That and facial-recognition software.”

“Well, let me know what you find. And if you find the guy, maybe you could ask him why he stole a license plate off of one of our vehicles.”

“You can do better than that, Carl.”

“We don’t own a single Econoline van, Heller.”

“Who doesn’t? Paladin? Or one of your twelve subsidiaries?”

“More than twelve. But no. No Econoline vans. I assure you, Heller, we didn’t abduct your brother. Although I do wish we’d thought of it.”

“I hope you’re not denying that’s your license plate,” I said.

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Koblenz said with a wry smile. “I can barely remember the license-plate numbers of my own cars. But the prefix on the plate suggests it’s one of ours, so I’m not going to argue. You’ll find it’s registered to either a Hummer or an Escalade, though. As for who switched the plates, well, I have no idea.”

“The D.C. police aren’t going to care what kind of vehicle it belongs on.”

“I doubt that seriously,” Koblenz said. “And as for the cash – well, all I can say is, you have my deepest thanks. You’re every bit as good as Jay Stoddard said you are.”

“A billion dollars in cash,” I said. “That should about cover your off-the-books payroll for a month or two.”

“Guilty as charged. But surely you don’t think we’re the only security firm in Baghdad who had to pay cash bribes to Iraqi officials to get things done. It was like Nigeria over there.” He slid a cigar box across the expanse of desk. “Have you forgotten how it worked, Heller? It was a cash economy. The biggest dispenser of cash bribes was the U.S. government. I’d love to see them try to prosecute. Have a Cuban?”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“Are you sure? Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas. Handmade in Cuba by only the most skilled torcedoras. Totalmente a mano. ”

“No, thanks.”

“Your father’s favorites. Though I don’t imagine he gets much of a chance to smoke them these days.” He selected one, took a guillotine clipper from his desk, held the cigar at eye level, then decisively circumcised it.

I paused, smiled, thought of at least three possible rejoinders. Then I took one of his cigars and studied it for a few seconds before handing it back to him. “My father, whatever his flaws, would never smoke counterfeit cigars.”

“Counterfeit? I don’t think so, Heller.” He flicked a silver butane lighter and held the end of the cigar near the flame, rotating it slowly before putting it in his mouth and drawing on it slowly like a baby enjoying his first reassuring suck on a pacifier.

I pointed to the green-and-white tax stamp on the left front side of the box. “Put it under a blacklight and you’ll see. You won’t see the micro-printing above REPÚBLICA DE CUBA. That’s not a Cuban Government Warranty Seal.”

Wreathed in smoke, he examined the box suspiciously. “You can’t be serious.” He sounded uncertain.

“Sorry. Shouldn’t have said anything. Didn’t mean to spoil it for you. You’d never have known the difference.”

He stared at me through narrowed, glittering eyes.

I continued, “It took me a while to figure out why you’d hire the security director of Argon Express Cargo to steal your own shipment of cash. Until I realized that you didn’t want U.S. Customs discovering the cash, maybe on a random inspection. So you arranged a bogus theft. To make sure Paladin wasn’t charged with bulk-cash smuggling by some government bureaucrat.”

“I like your theory.”

“Thank you.”

“The only hole in it, of course, is that the U.S. government hired us to round up the cash in Baghdad and ship it back. Everything was aboveboard, or at least as much as it can be with the government.” He smiled.

“Sorry. Your mistake was giving Elwood Sawyer your cell-phone number as an emergency contact.”

“And on that slender reed you’re building a case against me? That someone gave him my cell-phone number? Now I’m wondering whether Jay Stoddard gives you too much credit.”

“No doubt,” I said.

“And as for your brother, well, he simply took on the wrong people.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He probably meant to go after Mother Teresa instead.”

“The hellbat of Calcutta is dead, alas,” Koblenz said with a lopsided grin. “Though I always wanted to have a tablecloth made out of her sari. Do we pay kickbacks to certain influential individuals in the Pentagon? Sure.”

“You admit it.”

“Well, not on the record, no, of course not. I’m not that stupid.”

“How much money did he demand from you for silence?”

“Not a cent, as far as I know.”

“Then why was my brother such a threat to you?”

“Who says he was a threat?”

“ ‘I got a stone in my shoe, Mr. Corleone,’ ” I said, quoting from the third Godfather movie. Another Stoddard favorite, but I liked it, too.

He got the reference. “As I said, we had nothing to do with your brother’s disappearance. Whoever’s on that surveillance tape, it wasn’t us. Do a little legwork, and you’ll see.” He smiled. “And no, we didn’t give your brother a poisoned cannoli either. Why would we?”

“Maybe for the same reason your goons are threatening to kidnap Roger’s son. Or e-mailing videos to his wife. And the spyware and the video cameras you planted in his house? The data went out to some Eastern European botnet and eventually right back to Paladin. Which I’ll admit took us a lot of digging. But every step was documented.” Only half of that was true. Dorothy still hadn’t been able to figure out where the network traffic ended up after it went to that Ukrainian network. But let him think we were more on top of things than we actually were.

He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about any surveillance device or any Eastern European… what ever. But arguendo, as the lawyers say – just for the sake of argument – let’s say my employees have been applying pressure on your brother’s wife. Why would they do that if we’d taken Roger prisoner? Where’s the sense in that?”

“Because he left something behind, and you want it.”

“Now you’re starting to make sense. You’re half-right.”

“Am I?”

“Absolutely. He does have something we want. That’s absolutely true. But I doubt he left it behind. That doesn’t fit with my understanding of your brother’s character. Though maybe that’s presumptuous. You know him far better than we do. Am I wrong to assume that he takes after your father?”

“What’s your point?”

He spun around in his chair and took a brown file folder from a wire rack on the credenza behind him next to a couple of generic office plants. He opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and looked at it for a moment. Then he handed it to me.

It was a fax from a bank in the Caymans called Transatlantic Bank & Trust (Cayman) Limited, located on Mary Street in George Town, Grand Cayman. A copy of a copy of a copy, festooned with smudges and photocopier artifacts. It was a letter from Roger, on Gifford Industries letterhead, to the bank’s manager. A letter of instruction.