The Aspen Account (16 page)

“You’ll never make it in time. Come this way.” And without another word, the man pulled him to the side of the building. They stood in the shadows as the other men exited from the building and exchanged a few final words. Then the Mercedes pulled away as the twins and the other men hiked through the snowy field back toward the mansion.

“Who are you?” Michael whispered.

“Name’s Hopkins. I work for Mr. Seaton.”

“Don Seaton? What kind of work?”

“I’m the butler. What happens on the property is my responsibility.”

“How did you find me?”

“Who said I was looking for you?”

“Who
were
you looking for?”

Hopkins didn’t answer. He watched the dark silhouettes moving across the field to the mansion.

“You knew my name,” Michael continued.

“Mr. Chapman, I’m required to be familiar with all overnight guests at the estate.”

“What were you doing out here?” Michael persisted.

Hopkins turned away from the field after everyone had disappeared back into the house. His shiny brown eyes gleamed at Michael from the shadows, with an intensity that commanded attention. “Mr. Chapman, this never happened. We never met. Neither of us was ever here.”

Hopkins paused to make sure there was no misunderstanding. There was none. “Now it should be fine for you to return to the main house,” he went on. “The twins never linger on the main floor. But watch the windows. Don’t let anyone see you.”

Michael moved past Hopkins to look around the corner. “Why are you helping me?” he asked, but when he turned around, the man was already out of sight, around the corner of the building. 

26

THE BLACK LINCOLN Town Car turned off the FDR Highway and into the parking area of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. The DMH, the premier heliport in New York City, catering mostly to top business executives, was only a few miles south of Wall Street, on the L-shaped Pier 6, which stuck out into the East River just north of the Staten Island Ferry.

Don Seaton stepped out of the limousine and walked with Marcus toward the terminal. Even on a Sunday afternoon, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was busy coordinating ship activity along the East River. Moving through the small security station, the two men were soon walking with a pilot down the wide concrete pier, to a blue Dauphin AS-365 helicopter. Stepping into the spacious aircraft, Seaton stretched his legs and started reading one of the files in his lap.

The bird lifted off, stirring a wide circle of white ripples that trembled in the river below. Rising into the air, they banked over the Brooklyn Bridge and followed the river as the field of gray buildings faded away behind them. Seaton looked out at the Empire State Building, still an imposing, beautiful feature of the skyline after all these many decades. Sunlight glinted off the countless glass-skinned buildings, making New York look, from the air, like the cleanest city in the world. Out the opposite window, he could see in the distance the Statue of Liberty, standing alone above the cold gray water. Flying over the city, Seaton could not help feeling a sad hollowness. He reflected briefly on the vigorous young man he had once been, and compared him to the sagging face now reflected in the window. And reflecting on the long and eventful life he had lived, he could not but wonder how much further he would be able to go before the end found him. Perhaps, he thought with an uncharacteristic sense of gloom, this would be his last time ever to see New York City.

Within minutes they landed at one of the Teterboro Airports, where they again made their way through security before being escorted to the private Learjet, where Captain Steiner was waiting to take off.

Once they were in the air, Seaton scanned through some additional investigative documentation relating to Lance and Lucas during their university days. “What does all this prove?” he asked Marcus after closing the file.

Marcus was sitting across from him, at one of the small tables near the back of the fuselage.

“It proves they are capable of a lot more harm than we originally thought.”

“You can’t really conclude that based on just this.”

“Sir, I had one of my contacts at the Bureau take a look at this information. She’s a profiler, and I figured her opinion wouldn’t hurt.”

“That’s taking things a little far, isn’t it, Marcus? An FBI shrink? We don’t even know for sure if the boys have been up to anything. So they’ve taken a different stance than I on the Cygnus merger talks. So they’re distancing themselves from my ideas and have been trying to persuade the board to change strategies. I can handle the board, and I can sure as hell handle my own sons.”

Marcus said nothing as his boss turned to look out the window.

“Okay,” Seaton conceded after his brief objection. “So what did your friend say?”

“She said the thing that most interested her, the one thing that we need to be most cautious of, is that the twins have always been together. She didn’t see any evidence of competition between them, no evidence of disagreements or disloyalty. Everything they have been through, they have been through together. They feed off each other’s strengths, and they give each other confidence to pursue things that neither would attempt on his own. That was the main warning she gave. She said that as long as they’re together, they will continue to be fearless before others. But she also warned that they have become so dependent on each other that if they are ever separated, there’s no telling just how unbalanced or destructive they may become.”

Seaton felt the jet being gently pushed around by soft turbulence. He closed his eyes. The conversation with Marcus had fired him up at first, but now he felt weak. As a businessman, he found the background history and analysis about his sons very concerning. As a father, he found it terrifying. He was seventy years old, but instead of having a strong understanding of the circles he lived in, he had suddenly found himself blindly feeling his way in life. Everything he had thought true, all the assumptions he had believed and lived by, had melted away. And he feared more than ever that something horrible was taking place in his own kingdom. With his eyes still closed, he could almost feel the speed at which the jet was burning across the skies, taking him toward his distant home in Aspen, where he would prepare for the coming board meeting in Denver. Things were moving too fast, and he feared that everything would soon spin out of control.

*     *     *

The Learjet 60 XR descended over the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains. It was a little after six on Sunday evening, four hours after Seaton and Marcus had left New York City. The sun had set almost an hour ago. The jet shook as it hit some sudden turbulence: they were passing between Elbert and Harvard, two fourteeners not far outside Aspen, which many pilots called “the Goalposts.”

“Mr. Seaton?” a woman’s voice called out.

Seaton turned his head away from the black window to find the flight attendant waving at him from the front of the fuselage. She was holding the satellite phone next to a leather ottoman.

“You have a phone call, sir. A Mr. Darryl Mitchell from New York.”

He looked at his watch. He would be impressed if Mitchell had already gotten him some information. 

“Seaton here. What do you have for me, Darryl? Answers?”

There was a hesitation on the other end, as if Mitchell was choosing his words with care. “With all due respect, Mr. Seaton, I would expect
you
to be the one with the answers. Why did you hire me to find out the cause of the bankruptcy when you knew it was because of X-Tronic?”

Seaton felt as if he had been slapped. “
X-Tronic?
What are you
talking
about?”

“Mr. Seaton, do you recognize the name Chartz Networks? It was Jack Ross’s company.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“I see. Well, it was X-Tronic that single-handedly put Chartz Networks out of business. Your name is involved. I have a copy of an executive memo from you regarding the transaction.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. None of this made a damned bit of sense.

“Mr. Seaton, from the best I can tell, Jack tried to kill you because you were involved in the legal party that ruined his life.”

“What are you talking about! Before this weekend, I hadn’t even
seen
Jack for twenty-five years!”

“Then you’re going to find this rather interesting. I’ve obtained copies of court records documenting the bankruptcy proceeding. Do you know why his business went belly-up?”

“Nick said something about Jack’s company not being able to get a key product out of the development stage.” As Seaton spoke into the phone, he saw Marcus eyeing him from the back of the main cabin.

“The product was a new software application,” Mitchell said. “It was designed to help transfer information from scanned documents into actual accounting data that could be uploaded to a company’s operating system. Apparently, things were going well on the development side. To raise more capital, the company was planning to issue another round of stock to investors, and their software was scheduled to be completed in less than two years—that is, until a company named RSA Systems brought a lawsuit against Chartz Networks for patent infringement.”

“RSA?” Seaton said quietly as the concept settled into his mind. “Oh, my God! How is that
possible
?”

Mitchell continued without acknowledging Seaton’s question. “RSA’s legal motion forced Chartz Networks to stop all R and D until the suit was settled. RSA brought in a team of expert witnesses that pulverized Chartz. They even got Ross’s head software programmer to testify against the company. After six months, the courts found the company in breach of patent laws and ordered it to cease all operations of that specific product line. The problem was, Chartz had been gambling everything on that one product. He had no backup plan for something like this. The lawsuit was a fatal blow. Besides owing damages to RSA, he now had no product, no prospects for issuing new stock, and no bank that would extend him capital. He was finished. The board of directors voted to file for bankruptcy and liquidate the company.”

Seaton cupped a hand to his forehead, as if to ward off a sudden headache. He could feel everything closing in around him. First Marcus’s concerns about his sons, then the takeover threat from Kavanaugh, and then the news from Nick that Jack had suffered a failed life long before his violent death. And now it appeared that all these things might somehow be connected. The only time in his life that could trump his current despair was after his wife’s sudden death.

Mitchell paused for a moment to make sure all this was registering with Seaton before he continued. “And Mr. Ross lost everything. In the blink of an eye, all his stock options were worthless. In a desperate attempt to entice investors, he made some inflated reporting of the market value of the company’s investment holdings. The courts found this during the proceedings and hit him hard. He filed for personal bankruptcy. Afterwards, he couldn’t get another job to save his life. No one wants to hire a CEO who lost ninety percent of stockholders’ equity and attempted fraud in his last venture. Neighbors say he started drinking, his wife divorced him, and he eventually fell out of society—that is, until he showed up on Wall Street Saturday morning and tried to kill you . . .” Mitchell paused for a moment. “Mr. Seaton? You understand the connection now, don’t you?”

“RSA,” Seaton said weakly.

“That’s right. X-Tronic acquired RSA just one month after the final settlement of the lawsuit. And RSA eventually hired the lead software programmer from Chartz—the same guy who testified against Jack.”

Seaton sank back in his seat. His hand grew weak holding the phone, and he stared absently into the cold winter night. Small mountain towns lay scattered below like illuminated spider webs across the black earth.

“You can imagine, Mr. Seaton, what it must have been like for Jack to take such a rude slap in the face. He would have realized that merger talks take longer than a month. And he also would have realized that no company would offer to take over another company without identifying all risks involved—especially pending litigation regarding the validity of its products’ patent rights. I believe that once he realized it was you—his old business partner and childhood friend—who was involved in the lawsuit, it was only a matter of time before he looked for an opportunity for revenge.”

“I had nothing to do with the RSA deal,” Seaton said, knowing that it didn’t matter. “I was on a ski holiday in New Zealand for a month during that time. I only received updates from those in my company who were in charge of the merger.”

“And they never mentioned anything about the lawsuit? This is important, Mr. Seaton, because there is such an obvious connection between you and what happened to Jack. It’s almost as if someone intentionally wanted to make the two of you enemies.”

Seaton didn’t respond, though his mind swirled with all the different ways things may have played out behind his back. And he felt horrified that Jack had fallen victim to a situation Seaton himself may inadvertently have created within X-Tronic.

“Who was it, Mr. Seaton?” Mitchell asked excitedly. “Who was it that omitted telling you about the RSA lawsuit? Who was in charge of overseeing the merger?”

For the first time since Jack’s death, Seaton allowed himself to mourn the loss of his friend. He turned sideways against the window. Resting his head on the cold Plexiglas, he watched the dark sea of mountains drift by outside.

The jet ripped through a cloud, and he heard the whir of the landing gear motors. They would be landing in Aspen in minutes.

“Who was it?” Mitchell repeated. “Who set you up?”

But Seaton never answered the question. He merely hung up the phone without another word. The answer was too difficult to admit, the truth too terrible to reveal.

“My sons,” he whispered to his reflection in the window. “My God, what have they done?”