George Wallace - Hunter Killer [Movie Tie-In]

The pretty young waitress brought Stern another Scotch. She smiled as she told him it was time for him to board his flight. He made his way down the ramp to the first-class boarding gate, through the passport security check. He tried to look nonchalant while his papers were checked, but he held his breath anyway. The officer smiled, wished him a nice trip, and waved him on. He eased down into the luxurious, heavily padded seat that would be his for the next eleven hours.

The stewardess offered him another glass of Scotch. He leaned back and allowed himself to breathe normally. It was over. He was on board. He had passed through screening with no trouble.

Maybe Stan Miller had exaggerated the danger. Maybe they weren’t onto him yet. Still, it was prudent to leave, to go south, where he could start a new life with the fortune he had tucked away.

He sipped his drink as he watched the beautiful stewardess work her way down the aisle. One of the perks of flying the Brazilian national airlines was that they had not succumbed to the political correctness of American carriers. The stewardesses in first class were all quite lovely, very accommodating. It promised to be a comfortable flight. If he played his cards right, he might even have a beautiful dinner companion on his first evening in Rio.

The big triple-seven aircraft lumbered away from the gate and out toward the tarmac as Stern finished his latest drink. The stewardess replaced it at once without even asking. Her smile was dazzling.

He searched the flight entertainment system, looking for some restful music. As he adjusted the headphones and the pillow behind his head, he heard the pilot make some sort of announcement, something about having to return to the gate.

Must be some mechanical problem, Stern thought. Better to find it now than out over the Atlantic. He just hoped the delay wasn’t too long. The dinner menu he had just surveyed included lobster. He had not had a chance to eat yet today.

Stern didn’t pay much attention as the jet eased back up to the gate. He traveled enough to know this sort of thing was routine. And besides, he was watching the rather fetching shape of the stewardess and didn’t see the cabin door behind him swing open. Or notice the big black man who led a group of four other men on board the aircraft.

Stern looked up when he sensed the man standing in the aisle over him. He flashed a badge in Stern’s face.

“Mr. Stern, I am Special Agent Decker from the FBI. If you will, please, come with us. You are under arrest.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stern sputtered. “There must be some mistake.” He saw the beautiful stewardess, now looking at him with wide eyes, as if he was some kind of pariah. “What are the charges? I want a lawyer.”

“There is no mistake,” Decker answered. “You are charged with several counts of federal investment fraud. And the New Jersey authorities have a warrant for your arrest for the attempted murder of a Mr. Alan Smythe.”

The frumpy spinster took her seat at the back of the courtroom, sitting in the same chair she had occupied all week. No one paid her any attention. She was just another lonely soul, looking for someplace, some real drama to occupy her otherwise empty life. She sat quietly knitting, while the production played out up front. She appeared to working on a baby’s sweater, maybe for some newborn niece, the daughter of a prettier sister. She sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned, but otherwise, it would have been difficult to tell that she was even paying attention to the legal give-and-take going on up at the front of the room.

Not all the seats were taken. There was the usual crowd: “legal eagles,” curious onlookers, law students, a few members of the press who had been unfortunate enough to draw this duty. Dmitri Ustinov’s trial did not provide the high drama that the others had done. He was such a small cog, a technical geek caught up in a complicated mess, more along for the ride than in it for the really big score. Smythe and Stern, the big-buck guys, with their billion-dollar scheme and their ties to the Russian underworld and, in turn, to the Durov plot, had captured everyone’s imagination. Those were the trials that dominated the network newscasts and cable shows for weeks.

The stocky Russian’s day in court was much more cut-and-dried. Yes, he was clearly guilty of the federal stock manipulation charges. He had made changes to the system to reap tremendous gains. He had been caught red-handed, too. There was no earth-shattering testimony in this case. No courtroom heroics.

The only time any of the audience took note was when the prosecutor demanded to know where Ustinov had stashed the money he managed to steal before his cover was blown by Carl Andretti. Even the old spinster knitting in the back paused her clicking needles long enough to listen closely to the exchange.

“The numbered accounts you provided us are all empty, Mr. Ustinov,” the tired prosecutor reminded him. “Where did you move the money?”

But no amount of browbeating seemed enough to make Ustinov waver from his story. Those were the accounts into which he transferred all the money. Every penny. It was all there the last time he logged off, just before the FBI busted him. He could not account for where or how the money had been moved. This was the reason the government would not allow Ustinov to plead to a lesser charge. He would not tell them where the money was. That being the case, the prosecutor was going to make certain he would be in prison long enough that he would never be able to get any use from it.

This would be the final day of testimony. The prosecutor was out of questions and Ustinov’s defense counsel didn’t appear to have much to work with.

One of the prosecution’s younger attorneys, neatly dressed in his conservative gray pin-striped suit and red power tie, rose to start the day’s proceedings. Dmitri Ustinov sat on the witness stand, fidgeting nervously, his ill-fitting brown suit already rumpled and sagging.

The attorney walked slowly toward the witness stand. It appeared he was still forming his first question in his mind as he approached. Halfway there he stopped and turned back toward his table, as if he had forgotten some important fact. He picked up a yellow legal brief and turned again toward Ustinov as he read something scribbled on the page.

“Mr. Ustinov, it says here that you had an accomplice. Mr. Andretti testified that there were two of you operating the system when he overheard you talking of the plot. Who was your accomplice?”

Ustinov took a drink of water before he answered. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and trickled down each side of his face. He looked around the courtroom quickly. The question had been asked before, at least three times, and he had answered it the same each time, in a low voice, almost a whisper, with the pronounced Russian accent he had thickened for this trial.

“I vork alone. I have no accomplice.”

The prosecutor took a step backward and stared hard at Ustinov. He waited several seconds before he spoke, the disbelief heavy in his voice.

“I don’t think I heard you correctly. I thought I heard you say you worked alone. Is it not true that someone was with you in the testing room when Mr. Andretti discovered you? Who was that?”

Ustinov spoke more firmly now. “As I have told you, this girl, she was only a clerk, someone Andretti hired because she is Russian and she vork cheap. And because she had nice legs. Me, I try to… how you say?… get in her pants, bragging about money I make with system. No way she could be involved. She is only talented in one area… filling up tight sweater.”

Several people in the gallery laughed out loud. Even the spinster smiled and shook her head. It was the closest thing to juice in an otherwise dry week. The judge spluttered and tried to rein the proceedings back to their mundane norm. He ordered Dmitri Ustinov to restrict his answers to the questions.