Hatched (37 page)

“I don’t want to lose the whole fucking thing,” began Tom. “Jail, the house, the . . .,” he looked over at Jess, “the whole fucking thing. I don’t want to, and we don’t have to.” He spoke as though he was addressing a world far beyond the noise of this factory. “We always said that this was for eternity, or at least for this generation.”

It was hard to know if Tom was talking now to Jessica, or to the promise that the three men had made each other, all those years ago, about their eventual objectives. “If they slap on the fucking cuffs and drag us out of there, well, we thought of that.” He paused. “But you saw them with Snowden and Assange and the whole bunch of them. We are now sitting on a fucking fortune, maybe not for us, but . . .” He looked ever-more intensely at Jessica. “Unless,” said Tom, “we act now. Legally. We legally give everything to Jess. She is not involved, and is in no way part of this. I am giving her my options, because she’s my girlfriend, and I fear for my future, and wish to secure hers. I’m asking you to do the same thing, because we’re in this together, and rather than give it to someone else, I’d like to consolidate it into her hands.”

Ted turned to Jess. “Do you want it?”

“I know nothing. All I know is that Tom is a hero, and that you are all heroes. I want to continue this. If I have to go at it alone with all this, I’ll just give it all to the cause.”

“And the cause being?”

She opened wide her soft eyes, breathed the air that engulfs this entire planet, and stared forth towards the distant eternity. Therein echoed as much silence as could be mustered in a printing and cutting factory.

Ted looked into Jess’s eyes. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, a desirable woman, a girlfriend, his dream partner, an unrealizable fantasy. Jess was the oceans and the seas, the lakes and the streams, the mountains, the grass, the tall trees, the rainfall, the dew upon the grass in the early morning.

“Yah. Yes. Sure.” Ted joined the three of them at the table. “Yes, I will give it all to her.”

Ted stared into Jess’s eyes and uttered those words as though in some strange trance, as though these words, inconceivable but a few minutes prior, were as unmistakable as the sweet scent of freshly cut hay wafting through gloriously secluded farmland on a warm, sunny day. Ted spoke those words to his friends, but moreover he spoke those words to Jessica, and in his mind’s eye he saw her and him together, hand in hand from a lovely country home on this idyllic farmland, strolling towards a nearby barn, therein to amass a few fresh eggs for this morning’s breakfast after a feast of sensual pleasure created and forever recalled in the passion of love.

“Yes,” he repeated, Molly Bloom-like, as though in recollection of giving in to her, willingly. He looked around at his friends, at Tom, at Steve, and then back to Jess.

“Yes. Yes.”

He paused, and then under his own breath, and for his own self, for now, and forever.

“Yes. I will. Yes.”

Chapter 8

When Jude turned off of Highway 40 and into the Nashville International Airport, he was sporting a remarkably revitalized Crackerbox that had made the New York to Nashville trip with an unprecedented degree of confidence. This was not altogether surprising, because not only did Ted pay the mechanic to fix what turned out to be a minor blown gasket, but he also paid for a complete revamping of the truck, from the alternator to the Z-cam. Ol’ Crackerbox had not run this well since Kennedy was in office.

John Kennedy.

Jude had been sold a bill of goods in regards to the precious commodity he bore, in a locked crate, and he rather suspected as much. But he had been richly rewarded, and understood that part of the reward included a premium for not asking too many questions. The obscene payment for the delivery had been Jude’s principle obsession as the clock made its way around, and around, and around, from a very early Manhattan morning, to a very late Nashville night.

Ted had told Jude that the contents of the crate were documents and artworks belonging to Tom, who was anxious to hand deliver them to the extended family members in Nashville. He had also been told that although Tom had turned down the offer to join him for the long ride to Tennessee, he did want to be there for Jude’s arrival. There was some real risk inherent in this plan, and both Steve and Ted had tried to dissuade Tom from following through on the delivery. If something were to go wrong along the way, Jude might be forced to open the contents of his truck up for inspection, which would have been a disaster. Tom wouldn’t back down, and respecting the sacrifices they’d all made, the plan went forward as he had requested.

Rather than make some kind of effort to hide the cash, though, they had agreed to just seal it in a container and hope for the best. If the truck broke down or, worse, if the truck was searched and the money found, they’d indemnify Jude, and immediately make the call to the treasury, in the hope of getting to the long-awaited negotiations rather than to the inside of a NYC jail.

Luckily, there were no such problems.

The newly refurbished truck made the ride in a remarkable fifteen hours, including stops.

Jude was relieved, even jubilant as the final miles ticked off; but he was also totally exhausted. He rarely undertook such long trips, and had not done a serious distance in over a year.

“Perhaps,” he mused to himself, “I’ll never need to again!” His wallet was bulging, literally, and he felt that the unexpected windfall might be the key to his ability to become an author, a real author, and, perhaps, the author who would be credited with finally writing the Great American Novel.

“Yes!” he spewed at the thought of his eventual success and recognition. “Yes!” But then, as he pulled into the airport, twenty-five minutes early, he felt his body fading, his attention span paved under the thousand miles of asphalt he’d just traversed. Recognition later. Tonight: a really, really long sleep. He smiled to himself. In an extra-fucking-fancy hotel!

Tom, by contrast, was serious, and even brooding. Inwardly, he was simply nervous, and deeply preoccupied.

“Things have gone well,” he said to himself as the plane touched down. It was as though he needed to reassure himself. Jessica wasn’t there, and he’d promised Steve and Ted that he wouldn’t talk to her about the plan over the phone, and so they stuck to short conversations about love, about commitment, and about the perils that lay ahead, perils that could most certainly derail the fantasy of being together.

He had moments when he thought to ring Ted and Steve up, and suggest that they just call the whole thing off. Selling the options would yield billions in pure profit, and if they wanted, they had many more billions in counterfeit currency, enough to satisfy their wildest philanthropic dreams. But no. The objective wasn’t short term, and if it had been, they didn’t need to undertake the plan in the first place. Long-term, the US was heading on a path that would ruin what each of them held dear. It was time to put a stop to the madness, and they had the perfect opportunity. Now. Right now.

As Tom awaited the arrival of his checked luggage, he ruminated about the days to come. It was surprising that no unexpected impediment had hindered their march towards the US Treasury meeting. Here they were, five days away from calling in the stock options, and nobody had as yet recognized the implications of the plan. He once again took out his phone to call Ted and Steve. Instead, he chose the messaging app, and began to type.

“Why hasn’t anyone noticed that the rare earth stock option clock was ticking?”

He stared at “send,” and then deleted the message, fearing spyware of some kind. They had agreed to engage in all discussion face to face, in the warehouse if at all possible, which added a level of intrigue to their actions. At first, though, the exigency to speak face to face had been enjoyably anachronistic, as though all of the technologies of the past hundred years had been for naught. This rather quaint effort to rely only upon each other, in person, had made it difficult for them to explain their respective ever-lengthier absences from the offices they were used to frequenting. On the other hand, each of them had the autonomy that came with wealth, and the fortuitous ability to “work from home,” the mantra that had excited office workers, but then betrayed them. Most people who work from home do so after a long day of not working at home, so the net effect of the new technology was to further ruin the lives of the aspiring middle class. But it offered benefits for the haves, and Ted, Steve, and Tom fit that description. And so now, as Tom felt the need to figure out where they were before the balls of their existences came crashing down like so many New Years’ symbols, their orthodoxy about long-distance dialogue felt unrealistically confining.

It was true that the attention in the media leading up to the election was mostly about the election itself, with a smattering of fascination, that would become obsession, in regards to these bags of money. And so the reason why there hadn’t been any warning signals to the impending rare earth calamity was in part because there was no reason to look at these rather obscure Chinese commodity options at this time, in particular because it was a sector of the financial world that had never been monitored closely. In fact, nothing untoward was happening in that sector; a group of companies, all dummy corporations set up by Ted through the combined purchasing blocks owned by himself, Tom, and Steve, had made significant investments in relatively inexpensive commodities—in China. Speculation like this went on all the time, and since 9/11 the US government was far more vigilant about “commodities of national interest” (CNI), like jet fuel and food, than they were about rare earth materials. The CNIs had been chosen in the wake of the destruction of the Twin Towers, and thus in a world that was rather different from this one. Nobody, not even Steven Fraser, had noticed this.

Surprising.

These thoughts were running through Tom’s head as he headed towards the ground-floor parking, where he’d agreed to meet with Jude. A text alerted him to the fact that everything was, as they say, going according to plan.

Suddenly, Tom’s entire mindset shifted, and he thought of the community center where his father had sought solace, and found comfort. The madness of his plan made sudden sense, and he looked forward to the moment when he could finally embrace the people who his father had described as saviors, terrestrial beings with extraordinary generosity. They had taken his father’s cause as a kind of mission, and his father had promised recompense. Tom didn’t know that his fathers’ tears, his embrace, and his clear recognition of the Edgehill Community Center had been enough for the young Father Travis, who had taken the reins of the organization immediately following his master’s in divinity. Father Travis, no longer young, still directed the organization, and so when Tom picked up the phone to make the long-awaited call, Father Travis had answered. This was the second time that Father Travis had answered a call from Tom’s family. And now, Tom had reassured him on the phone, he would be rewarded for having done so.

Chapter 9

The news of the shooting was greeted with horror, and although there were several reports of the events leading up to it, the one certainty was that nobody was certain as to what happened that evening on Edgehill Road. It’s clear that Tom spent the night in the Union Station Hotel, and that his stay had been uneventful. Jude, desperate for luxurious surroundings in which to spend his riches, had chosen the historical option, the Hermitage Hotel. He had been lured by descriptions of its famous bathroom, which featured walls in gleaming lime-green-and-black leaded glass tiles, lime-green fixtures, terrazzo floor, and a gleaming two-seat shoeshine station. He had somehow imagined that “historic latrine” would be part of his own room, but learned that it was in fact in the bar, downstairs. As such, Ted also learned that Jude had spent an inordinate amount of time, and money, in that sacred space.

The events of the next day were less clear. Tom, committed to delivering his “sacred package,” had relieved Jude of his cargo when he arrived at his hotel, and several hotel employees did attest to their having seen Tom with a rather unruly sack, with which he checked in that night. Hotel cameras also caught Tom leaving the hotel very late that night, apparently at around 2:00 a.m. He was seen carrying the same bag, but clearly less encumbered, suggesting that he had emptied out some of the currency, most likely in the interest of mobility. A taxi driver confirmed that his passenger had carried that bag right into the backseat of a taxi that dropped him off on the corner of 15th and Edgehill, the gateway into the projects. That same driver confirmed returning to the same spot one hour later, where a rather disheveled but considerably less burdened Tom gave orders to the driver to return to the hotel. The bag he had been carrying was, by the taxi driver’s report, probably empty.

The next day, it was Jude who showed up at the hotel to pick Tom up, at around noon. The reasons were clear; Jude still bore a significant part of the cargo in his truck, and it was Tom’s intention to offer it to Father Travis in the name of his own father. After a brief stop in the hotel, apparently for coffee and a muffin, Jude drove Tom to the Edgehill Community Center and helped him to carry another large bag, presumably the remainder of the precious cargo. Jude was anxious to complete this short delivery as quickly as possible, since he was hoping to get back on the road to New York, and maybe even arrive on that same evening so as to wake up in his own bed the day after. Once he had helped Tom with the bag, however, Tom returned with him to the truck, and the two of them were seen talking in the cab. This was where the story became a tad incomprehensible.

According to Jude, Tom was extremely agitated after delivering the bag to Father Travis, and had insisted that Jude speak with him in private. Father Travis, in the meantime, was standing outside the cab, anxiously waiting for Tom so as to be able to celebrate the amazing gift that he had brought to the Center. As far as Jude could recall, Tom had been enigmatic, ranting and raving about eternity and the divine, rather than simply carrying out the plan and returning to the airport for his flight back to New York.