Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (33 page)

“Should I tell Mossad the heat is off their boy?”

“Fuck Mossad. They always need something to worry about. Let them worry about Steinman. Besides, the heat isn’t really off. We can get Steinman a day or two after we get the others. Think of Steinman as the dessert after the main course.”

Tomás and Santos had been listening in on the conversation. They couldn’t help it, since they were sitting across the table. They liked their assignments as well as the assignments their colleagues received, but Tomás wondered if he could do anything to stop the Steinman killing, since he didn’t think professors and journalists should be executed just for exercising their First Amendment right of free speech and press. He also wondered whether Santos would be willing to help him.

“The incorporation of a bank and the powers assumed (by legislation doing so) have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution. They are not among the powers specially enumerated.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Thomas Jefferson

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

Thomas Jefferson

Nelson Fuller got his PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley about 20 years ago. He was a firm believer in the Keynesian economic theory that a country could spend its way out of a recession through deficit spending, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He fully supported the Federal Reserve Board’s policy of pumping money into the economy, even though the effect was to increase inflation and thereby rob people of the purchasing power of their savings. In fact, he supported any Federal Reserve Board policy that increased its control over the economy.

In his mid-forties and of average height, he had orange hair, which was fairly long but thinning. Physically, he was not well suited for Miami. His pasty white skin started turning pink after being in the sun for five minutes. He had the kind of skin that was prone to skin cancer. He was better suited for Bellingham, Washington, the city that had the least number of sunny days in the country.

His job as Chairman of the Miami branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta was mostly administrative. He was just a branch employee at one of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks.

The people in Washington didn’t much care for his opinion. He was upset about that, but planned to remedy that situation soon. He was ambitious and planned to use his current position as a stepping stone that would place him closer to the seat of power. He was the favorite to assume the chairmanship of the Atlanta Fed when the current chairman retired next year. In the meantime, he was enjoying the fringe benefits, one of which was having access to insider information about when the Fed was going to change interest rates. He also used the fact that the Fed had never been audited to enhance his personal wealth.

The nice thing about knowing when interest rates were going to change was that it didn’t matter whether they were going to go up or down. You could make a killing either way, as long as you knew the direction of the change.

A few years ago, shortly after assuming his current position, he set up a series of offshore accounts under phony names so that he could trade on his insider interest rate information. He had been able to pile up enough cash that he no longer had to work, but he had no intention of retiring. He was making too much money on the side for that, and he was into it for the power more than for the money. Once he made it to the Atlanta Fed chairmanship, he would be one of the 50 most powerful men in America; maybe one of the top 20.

Nobody but a select few knew who the Fed was lending money to or under what terms and conditions. The fact that the Fed had never been audited since its founding in 1913 had allowed this corruption to fester. There were many opportunities to skim a little off the top here and there, especially when the Fed made loans to banks in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The people on the receiving end had been treating him very well. He set up a second group of offshore accounts to deposit their gifts.

He followed a regular routine. He got to work shortly before 9am and left around 5pm. Some days he didn’t have a lot to do, but he made a point of always arriving on time and never leaving early unless he had a good reason so that he could set a good example. He ate lunch at the same three or four restaurants.

He never flirted with the female staff. He followed a strict policy of
don’t shit where you eat
. He didn’t want any sexual scandals to derail his career path. He was married, with two sons, 17 and 20. He hadn’t cheated on his wife in more than 15 years.

As an undergraduate at Princeton he experimented with homosexuality. His roommate in his junior year was a jock, who used to refer to him as his fuck cushion, because he was fat at the time and preferred to be on the bottom.

Jim Bennett didn’t have much difficulty learning Fuller’s schedule. He almost always went to lunch between 12:50 and 1:10. He liked going around 1pm because it made the afternoon shorter. He seldom took more than an hour for lunch because he wanted to set a good example. Most of the restaurants he chose were within walking distance. He usually ate alone, although sometimes he used lunch as an opportunity to have a meeting. He liked to multitask.

About a week after Bennett received the assignment to get information about Fuller’s schedule, he and Wellington met in the lobby of Wellington’s downtown office building.

“Hi John,” he said, extending his hand. They shook, and Wellington said, “Let’s go outside. It’s a beautiful day and I don’t want to talk in the lobby in front of all these cameras.”

They walked out the front door, turned left and stopped about 50 feet later. They stopped a few feet short of the alley because there was a truck there loading merchandise and making a lot of noise. The alley was also a little smellier than usual because the garbage hadn’t been picked up yet.

Jim reached into his pocket, pulled out a flash drive and handed it to Wellington.

“Here, John. This has all the information you’ll need. It’s password protected but I didn’t make up a password for it. I figured that if you did it you might be able to remember what it was.”

“Good thinking, Jim. I’ll try to think of something I can remember. What kind of stuff is in here?”

“Fuller’s going to be an easy hit. He’s regular. He follows a pattern. Comes and goes at the same time. Goes to lunch around one o’clock at the same restaurants, usually alone. Most of them are close to a parking lot or on-street parking. I have it all written down, with photos and my personal suggestions.”

“Thanks, Jim. The Boss will be proud of you.”

“Thanks, John. I appreciate that.”

They shook hands and said good-bye. Wellington went back to his office, plugged the flash drive into his laptop and skimmed it for content. There was more than enough information to complete the task. Since a good password contains both letters and numbers, he chose one that had both – F6211212518, which included the first letter of Fuller’s last name, plus the numerical equivalent of his name. F was the 6
^th
letter of the alphabet, U was the 21
^st
, L the 12
^th
, E the 5
^th
and R the 18
^th
. He slipped it into his pocket and went back to his Commerce Department work.

Wellington looked over at Paige. “Pass the meat loaf, please.” Paige picked it up and passed it to him. As he placed the palm of his left hand under the plate he could feel the heat. As it passed beneath his nose he could smell it as the steam rose. Paige and Sveta were at the Wellingtons, having dinner.

Sarah picked up a bowl and passed it to him. “Don’t forget the potato salad.” He took it and put a few dollops on his plate, just enough to satisfy Sarah. It was her mother’s recipe. John didn’t especially like it. He told her that several times over the years but she didn’t get the message, so after a while he stopped mentioning it. He just ate enough of it to keep her happy. He would much have preferred mashed potatoes today. They go much better with meat loaf, but Sarah didn’t know that. Although she was a pretty good cook, some of her food combinations left a lot to be desired.

Alicia, their six-year-old daughter, was wearing a pretty yellow and blue dress. She sat politely at the table, waiting for the food to come to her. Sarah sat next to her, helping her put it on the plate.

Wellington noticed that his son, Jack was wearing his baseball cap at the table again, which was not unusual. During the summer it was usually welded to his head. “Jack, take off your cap, please. We’re at the dinner table.” Jack responded by silently hanging it on the post of his chair, to be retrieved as soon as dinner was over.

“So, Sveta, what kinds of food did you eat growing up in Russia?” Sarah was curious to learn about what people ate in other countries. Although she read about it in books, it was always better to get a first-hand description.

“One of my favorites was borscht, especially in the winter.”

“I’ve heard of that but what is it?”

“It’s a kind of vegetable soup. The main ingredient is beets. My mother used to make it by chopping up beets, onions, carrots, celery and tomatoes and adding some spices like crushed garlic, sugar, a few pints of beef stock, a bay leaf, salt and pepper. Maybe she would put in a little red wine vinegar, too. Sometimes it would actually have chunks of beef in it, and maybe a chopped up boiled potato. Then, when it was nearly ready to serve, she added some sour cream. It was delicious. It goes very well with thick, Russian black bread, too.”

“That does sound delicious.”

Wellington added, “It sounds like a lot of work to me.”

“Oh, John, it’s not work when you enjoy cooking. You wouldn’t know because the only cooking you’ve ever done is pushing the button on the microwave.”

“Do you still make it?”

“No. John is right about the work. It is much easier just to buy it at
Kalinka
. It’s a Russian deli on Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach. I sometimes add a little something to it after I get home, like sour cream, which I can also buy at
Kalinka
.”

Alicia was sitting quietly, listening and absorbing every word of the conversation. Although she had met foreigners before, they were almost all Spanish speaking. She went to school with some of them. Sveta was the only Russian she had ever met. She was fascinated by her accent.

Alicia’s curiosity finally got the better of her. “Did they have supermarkets in Russia? And microwaves?”

“No, they didn’t, not while I was growing up. All those things came later.”

“Then where did you buy your food?”

Sveta smiled. “We bought it on the street or in small shops.” She didn’t want to go into further details, like the fact that there were sometimes shortages of basic goods, or that you often had to bribe a store keeper to sell you something. Some store keepers deliberately kept their shelves empty. It provided them with opportunities to earn extra income by selling food and other products under the table – or out the back door. The shortages were the result of central planning. Bribery was the natural result of market forces, trying to match supply and demand at a market clearing price.

“Alicia had a dance recital yesterday. Tell Sveta about it.”

“Yeah, I had a dance recital yesterday. It was kinda fun.”

Sarah went on to give the details, but only Sveta was paying any attention. Wellington was thinking about the assignment the Boss had given him to assassinate Nelson Fuller, and Paige was thinking about how he could prevent Wellington and his boys from executing Steinman, assuming that that was their plan. He wondered if Rona, Steinman’s wife, was also on the hit list. Both he and Sveta had grown to like them after having dinner with them a few times. They had become friends.

Paige liked Wellington and his family. They were good parents. Their kids seemed well-adjusted, although that could all change as they hit their teen years. He wondered how Wellington could be a family man and a cold blooded killer at the same time. But more importantly, Paige wondered whether he had the ability or the will to stop him from executing Steinman, if it came to that. Time would tell.

Today would be Nelson Fuller’s last day on earth, or at least it would be if John Wellington had anything to do with it. Wellington looked at his watch. It was 12:57pm. Three of the four restaurants where Fuller ate were in the same general location, so there was a 75 percent chance Fuller would be walking by soon. He planned to whack him when he was about a block from the restaurants. Fewer witnesses that way.

Wellington waited for him, dressed in a white t-shirt with no identifiable characteristics, wearing a black baseball cap, also with no identifiable markings, old looking blue jeans and sneakers. He wasn’t wearing his regular glasses. He had on sun glasses instead. He had left his suit, dress shirt and black leather shoes in the trunk of his car, which he parked around the corner, pointed toward a side street for a quick getaway. He would change into them later, before returning to work.

The car had a phony license plate on it, just in case. He had a small supply of them, which he collected as part of his work. He would replace it with his real plate later, in a dark, indoor parking garage a few miles away.

He wore transparent skin-hugging plastic gloves. He didn’t plan on touching anything, but he didn’t want to leave any finger prints, just in case. He was carrying his Beretta Model 92 Custom Carry 9mm in a cloth bag. The attached suppressor made it too bulky to tuck into his jeans.

Wellington didn’t want to look conspicuous just standing there, so he stopped to look into a few store windows, keeping his hands in his pockets so no one would notice his transparent gloves. Occasionally he would look in the direction where Fuller would likely be coming from. After about a minute, Fuller appeared. He crossed the street and was about a hundred feet away, walking directly toward Wellington.