Montaro Caine (20 page)

“We accept your condition, Miss Krinkle,” Freich told Cordiss.

“But you have not heard my condition, Mr. Freich. My price is once again ten million. That is my condition if we are to do business. Otherwise I will return for the merchandise this afternoon.”

Freich smiled, but for a long time he said nothing. Then, turning to Zurber, his smile disappeared. He gave the banker a curt nod before his stern eyes shifted back to Cordiss. “When our check clears, you will tell us what we want to know,” he said. Taking her by the arm he led her over to Zurber’s desk. From his folder, Zurber reluctantly removed the paperwork needed to complete the deal. Cordiss read the pages carefully, then signed. When she finished, Zurber gave her a glare and an envelope. She lifted its flap and pulled out a check made out to her for ten million dollars. In light of the wild exhilaration that had just been let loose inside her, she was proud of her cool, controlled appearance.

“My bank in Liechtenstein has a branch here in Geneva,” she began before Freich interrupted her.

“Therefore, your check should clear by tomorrow at noon,” he said.

“Then you should hear from me no later than two.” With that, Cordiss Krinkle, now a multimillionaire, turned and walked out of Helmont Zurber’s office. She had made quite a payday for herself with only two little coins, plus a lifetime’s worth of preparation. In addition, she now knew how to piss ice water.

M
ONTARO
C
AINE HAD ENDURED A SLEEPLESS NIGHT AND A
distracted day before arriving at the Mozelle Women’s Health Center to meet with Howard and Elsen Mozelle, Anna Hilburn, and Michael Chasman.
The New York Times
and
The Wall Street Journal
had been refreshingly free of stories speculating about Fitzer Corporation’s future, but that didn’t necessarily mean good news. In the all-too-smooth exchanges he’d had earlier in the day at his office with Carlos Wallace and Alan Rothman, he sensed that they were concocting a plot against him, although he couldn’t say for certain what that plot might be. Later, he had tried without success to get hold of Gordon Whitcombe to see if he could glean any new information about Priscilla’s case, but this didn’t necessarily mean bad news; Whitcombe was a perfectionist and generally did not like to speak until he had brought matters to a successful resolution.

On the taxi ride to Mozelle’s office, Caine made what he judged to be a tactical error by telling his wife more than he intended to when he called to tell her that he would be coming home late, if at all. Feeling guilty about spending so many nights in the city, he began to tell Cecilia the story about the coins and what he hoped might come out of the meeting with Mozelle, then had to stop midway through when he realized that he couldn’t answer half the questions his wife was
asking him.
What coins? How much are they worth? How can they be used? Wait, what?

Dr. Michael Chasman was the last to arrive at the meeting. His return flight from Geneva had touched down at 2:15 p.m. at JFK Airport. Two hours later, he rushed into Howard Mozelle’s office, where he found the doctor, Mrs. Mozelle, Anna Hilburn, and Montaro Caine seated expectantly.

Chasman felt energized yet exhausted from his trip, and he spoke before he had a chance to take the chair that Dr. Mozelle had offered him. “I know we have a lot to discuss,” Chasman said breathlessly. “I can certainly assure you, from my end, that the past few days have been astonishing. But I think you should first bring me up to speed on what’s been going on here. I’ve obviously been operating under some erroneous impressions over the last twenty-six years.” He turned to Dr. Mozelle. “Is that a fair assessment?”

Dr. Mozelle nodded. “Yes, apologies for that, old friend. But please, make yourself comfortable.” He once again gestured for Chasman to take a seat. “There’s a lot to discuss, and most of it is more astonishing than you already think.”

An hour later, Dr. Chasman sat spellbound by the strangest story he had ever heard. It began with the story of Elsen Mozelle’s illness and concluded with the tale of Cordiss Krinkle, whose phone records had been obtained by Montaro’s investigators, leading them to find out all that she had learned while researching Whitney and Franklyn Walker’s births. Then, it was Chasman’s turn to tell the others about the phone call he had received from Julius Hargrove; his meeting in Chappaqua with Herman Freich and Colette Beekman; the private jet to Geneva; his ride to Lausanne for the meeting with Johann Flugle and Gertz Welbocht; and finally, his fruitless trip to Berlin, where he had been asked to comment on a seemingly endless number of outdated astronomical charts. He said that he had come to believe the Berlin trip had simply been intended to delay his return, though he had been paid handsomely for his troubles. When Chasman finished, the others remained silent until Montaro spoke, addressing everyone in the room.

“Am I correct in assuming, since all of us in this room have a stake
in this concern, that we are all interested in the exact whereabouts of both coins?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Dr. Mozelle said.

“O.K.,” said Caine. “But beyond that desire, which we all have in common, our individual interests come into play. Those interests differ from one another in varying degrees and could be the source of misunderstandings down the line.” Caine faced Chasman directly. “Therefore, I think each of us should state now, before we go any further, what it is we want”—Caine pivoted back toward Dr. Mozelle—“over and above the return of stolen property to the rightful owner.”

Dr. Mozelle leaned forward, peering over his glasses at Caine. “Fair enough,” he replied. Briefly, his eyes slid away from Caine to stare out the window overlooking 67th Street and the afternoon traffic that was beginning to clog the streets. Then, he turned his attention back to Caine. “First of all,” he began. “There’s the question of ownership. Anna and I never told Whitney or her mother about the coin. I’ve tried to justify that decision to myself in several ways—if word got out, her life would no longer be private; no one would believe me and I would be ridiculed. And then, once we started to learn more about the coins, I didn’t know what the next step to take might be.

“Most of all,” he continued, “I’d like answers. I believe we are dealing with more than science here, much more, something beyond us and beyond Whitney. Twenty-six years ago, Whitney Carson was born with a tiny object in her hand. Why? And why, less than two months later, fifty-six days later to be precise as we have now learned, was Franklyn Walker born in Georgia, with an object in
his
tiny hand? They grew up in different parts of the country, but still they found each other. They fell in love, they got married, and now they are having a baby.” Mozelle glanced, in turn, at Caine, Chasman, his wife, and, finally, at Anna Hilburn.

“It is my strong feeling that we have to think a great deal about what will happen when that baby is born,” Dr. Mozelle said. He paced back and forth across the room a few times before he spoke again. “As to the question of the return of stolen property to its rightful owner, yes, I would very much like to have the coin returned to me. But again, I can’t claim to be the rightful owner in any true sense. If such
a claim can be made on behalf of anyone, then the coins are the property of Whitney and her husband. What I want are answers about the coins, and I think we need to do our best to have those answers as quickly as we can and hopefully before that baby is born. What about you, Montaro?”

“My interests are in the materials the coins are made of,” Caine said plainly. He rose from his chair, rammed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, and cocked his head at an odd angle toward the ceiling as he searched for the right words. “I confess to being truly fascinated by the strange way in which the coins came into existence—who wouldn’t be, after all—and my curiosity has been at fever pitch ever since you first took me into your confidence. I don’t want to overstate the case, but if a way could be found to synthetically reproduce the materials in these coins, it could revolutionize my industry, just about every industry in fact. Think about it—a metal stronger than any we have ever seen, impervious to heat. I’m sure I haven’t allowed myself to imagine all the possibilities and implications. My overriding desire is to be able to conduct an in-depth, laboratory examination of each coin, when and if we manage to obtain them. That is the basis on which I am willing to work with you.”

Dr. Mozelle glanced at his wife and Anna before turning back to Caine. “We three have had twenty-six years in which to develop interests far beyond those of fascination and scientific curiosity,” he said. “Though my wife, myself, and, I believe I speak for our friend Anna, have different interests from yours, they are in no way incompatible. You will have no resistance from us, as long as your work does not destroy or disfigure the coins.”

The room turned to Chasman. “My interest is solely scientific at this point,” the astronomer said, “and I see no reason, from what I’ve heard here, for any conflict down the line.”

“Well,” said Dr. Mozelle, “with that settled, we must now put our minds to finding where the coins are and who controls them.”

“The coin I saw in Switzerland,” Chasman quickly broke in, “is controlled by whomever that man Freich and my colleagues Flugle and Welbocht were representing.”

“Kritzman Fritzbrauner,” Caine said. “You’re right. If he bought it, it’s in Switzerland. But what if he didn’t?”

“In that case,” Dr. Mozelle said, “it would still be with Cordiss, who would probably be busy right now searching for another customer.” He turned to Caine. “Have you had any luck in tracking her down?”

“Her phone’s gone dead, but we’re on top of it as well as we can be,” Caine said. “By the end of the day, we should have a fix on her. Certainly no later than tomorrow.”

“And then?” asked Dr. Chasman.

“Then someone will have to pay her a visit,” said Caine.

Howard Mozelle’s face grew alive. His wife reached out to Anna Hilburn and squeezed her hand while Caine looked long and hard at each of them. How much like children they were, he thought. Dr. Mozelle was brilliant beyond question; the two women were highly accomplished in their areas of expertise. As a student at M.I.T., Montaro had been a lot like them, he thought. And yet, as the CEO of Fitzer Corporation, he understood that they were all extremely naive about what went on in the trenches of the real world he had to inhabit on a daily basis. In his world, he rode the bulls of chance and fate, cunning and greed. Dog ate dog, and the mighty crushed only each other, since the weak had long been accorded the ultimate indignity of not being worth the fight.

“If I’m going to carry the ball, which I am happy to do, I should let you understand what I think we’re up against,” said Caine. “To begin with, we’re fighting the clock. A hot item cannot be kept secret for very long. Every day the circle widens. If both coins are already in the hands of people like Fritzbrauner, our job starts out about as tough as can be. I’ve never met a collector yet who wasn’t a hard-nosed businessman first. By now, a man like Fritzbrauner will have gathered every bit of information there is about the coins, beyond the notes stolen from your safe. You can bet he has imagined a variety of scenarios, each of which will lead him to the pregnancy of Whitney Carson Walker.” At this point, a thought occurred to Caine. He whipped around to face Dr. Mozelle. “Howard? In your notes on the history of
the first coin, did you ever mention Whitney or any member of her family by name?”

Mozelle closed his eyes and gently massaged them, as if trying to call forth mental images of his note pages. He slowly shook his head. “No, we didn’t,” he said. He shot a glance at Anna as he often did when he felt unsure. Anna nodded her agreement. “No,” Mozelle continued, more confidently. “We specifically left her name out of it. At the time, I thought it might be an unnecessary precaution, but now I don’t believe it was. Why do you ask?”

Caine ignored the doctor’s question. “I want you to pull Whitney’s chart and all references to her and her mother from any of your active files in this office. If you have records online, trash them. Do it today; and, instruct everyone with access to those files to report to you any inquiries of any kind about Whitney or her parents.”

“I don’t understand,” said Dr. Mozelle.

“If there is no reference to Whitney by name in your notes, and if Cordiss Krinkle is as smart as I think she is, she will withhold all that information from her buyers.”

“Why would she withhold it?” asked Chasman.

“Because if Whitney is going to have a baby, information about her pregnancy and her whereabouts could bring a handsome price. My sense is that Miss Krinkle will first sell the coins to two interested parties; later, when the time is right, she will sell the information about the pregnancy and have those parties bidding against each other.”

“But,” interrupted Anna, “wouldn’t whoever she has sold the coins to insist on having that information?”

“Not if there is no indication of it in the notes. My guess is that Miss Krinkle will claim to have no knowledge of Whitney’s whereabouts, and she will not, under any circumstances, divulge what she knows about the pregnancy until she can sell that information. In any event, time is of the essence.”

When Caine emerged from Dr. Mozelle’s office into what intermittent sunshine was left, the Friday afternoon getaway traffic to Long Island had all but strangled the exit routes from the city. The bumper-to-bumper parade of vehicles on Park Avenue was barely crawling now. He’d have to walk to The Carlyle if he wanted to get there by
nightfall, he thought. As he walked west, he wondered when he would ever get a decent night’s sleep. He longed to be home—he needed the comfort of his wife’s touch; his daughter needed him. He longed to hear both of their voices, not on the phone, but in person. Unfortunately, other matters beckoned.

When Caine reached The Carlyle, Michen Borceau was already waiting for him in the lobby, flushed with excitement. In one hand, he held the printout of the analysis that he had conducted on the coin slivers that Caine had provided him. The Frenchman’s words began to come forth in a torrential flow, but Caine silenced him with a wave of his hand. Borceau talked too much—Caine had often cautioned him about this indiscretion—and, though he was as eager to hear Borceau’s report as the man obviously was to deliver it, he would not let Borceau speak until they were alone in his apartment.