The Insider (12 page)

“I’m sorry, Jay.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” he said brusquely. “The phone is by the bed if you need it.”

“Okay.”

He pulled away from her embrace and exited the room, closing the door behind him. For several moments he stood there, amazed that Sally had been able to pull the drowning story out of him. It was the first time he had spoken of it since the day it had happened, ten years before.

She worked by the light of the computer monitor, tapping on the keyboard as quietly as possible while she retrieved the file. After what seemed like an eternity, words and numbers finally flashed onto the screen. She scanned what was there, then began printing, working quickly for fear that he would wake up.

CHAPTER 10

The living room came slowly into focus as gray light filtered through the window blind, unadorned by curtains because his was a typical bachelor’s apartment. Curtains weren’t a priority.

Jay’s mind drifted toward full consciousness and he realized that his body felt oddly constrained. There seemed to be a wall on one side of him and an edge of nothing on the other. Then he remembered. He was sleeping on the couch. Sally Lane was in the bedroom.

He stretched his long legs, extending his feet further over the worn and faded fabric of the couch’s arm. After trying to find a comfortable position all night and catching only a couple of hours of sleep, he was exhausted, and now it was time to head into a killer day that wouldn’t end until eleven o’clock that night—if he was lucky.

He began to rise from the couch, then groaned and fell back, not yet ready to face the day. In the back of his mind he had hoped that at some point during the night Sally would steal out into the living room, awaken him with another passionate kiss, then lead him back to the bedroom and make love to him over and over. He pulled a pillow from behind his head, ground it into his face, and groaned again. Christ, they’d only met two days earlier. Yes, they had kissed the previous night, but so what? Sally didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who fell into bed with a man after one kiss. And he didn’t want her to be that kind of woman.

Her perfume had haunted him all night—a subtle scent he had first noticed on the club’s porch, then later filled his senses as they kissed and embraced in his bedroom. He pulled the pillow aside and sniffed his arms— the scent was still there—and smiled as he remembered the touch of her soft lips against his. A wonderful kiss, full of passion, that told him she had much more than a passing interest in pursuing a relationship.

Jay swung his feet to the floor and stood, clad only in light blue boxers. There was no need to dwell on how much he had enjoyed the previous day with Sally. That would only make the day in front of him even longer.

He stretched once more, raising his hands far above his head, then padded toward the bedroom door. It was slightly ajar. Maybe Sally was already using the bathroom. He hadn’t heard her get up, but perhaps he had been sleeping so soundly during the last hour that he hadn’t been able to hear anything. He glanced down the hallway. The bathroom door was open and the lights were off, and there was no scent of shampoo or perfume or any warmth from residual steam drifting from that direction.

“Sally,” he called in a low voice. No answer. He knocked gently on the bedroom door, then rapped louder. “Sally.” Still no answer. He pushed the bedroom door open and peered through the doorway. The bed was made and Sally’s bag was gone.

He moved down the short hallway past the kitchen to the bathroom and checked the shower. It was dry, obviously unused, which seemed strange. He doubted that she would have gone into work without a shower, so she must have headed all the way back to her Hoboken apartment.

Jay walked back to the bedroom and stood in front of the linen chest at the foot of the bed. The cordless phone wasn’t nestled in its stand where he had left it to recharge. Now the phone was on the night table.

Jay clasped his hands at the back of his head, his focus now on the computer in the corner of the room. Something seemed different about it or the table on which it was positioned. He scanned the table and the computer several times. Next to the CPU were the two boxes of wafer disks, one red and the other silver. They had been rearranged. The silver box was now in front of the red one. He always left the red one in front.

He moved across the floor to the table and stood before the computer for a moment, then leaned forward and placed his palm on top of the monitor. It was warm.

Victor Savoy stood at the edge of a forest near a grove of oak trees looking up at the steep hills rising around him on three sides like an amphitheater. He wore sunglasses, a thick black mustache, a dark blue baseball cap with U.S.S.
New Jersey
embroidered in gold lettering on the front, and padding beneath his shirt and pants to make himself appear overweight. He was with people who were supposedly allies, yet he still wore a disguise. He had learned that if you wanted to survive in this business, you trusted no one. A friend could become a foe in a heartbeat if he suddenly discovered your true identity.

After completing his bargain with Karim in Konduz, Savoy had negotiated the winding dirt roads of the Hindu Kush to Kabul in a beat-up Yugo, flown from Kabul to Amsterdam on a private jet, barely made a United flight bound for JFK airport in New York City, then immediately hopped aboard another private jet for the hour-and-a-half flight to Richmond, Virginia. At the Richmond airport he’d rented a car under the name Harry Lee and driven an hour southwest of the city to the remote farm in the Virginia countryside. He had taken a roundabout route to make certain that he wasn’t being followed.

It had been a grueling eighteen-hour trip. But now he was refreshed and alert after only a few hours of sleep on the United flight. He was pleased to be back in the States, particularly Virginia, because it was a homecoming of sorts. He had been born and raised in Roanoke, a small town a few hours to the west, though he’d left at sixteen to begin his life of “alternative procurement,” as he liked to call it, and never looked back. He was also pleased because watching the exercise made the end of the mission and an extraordinary paycheck finally seem close at hand. He only prayed to whatever gods existed that his second in command on the other side of the Atlantic could procure the weapons in Konduz and transport them to Karachi without incident, then load them on the tramp freighter waiting to set sail for Antwerp. There were so many things that could still go wrong.

Savoy grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds and stuffed them in his mouth. He glanced around as he spat out shells, checking the positions of his marksmen on the hills with a powerful pair of binoculars that hung from his neck by a leather strap. Then he looked up at the sky. Ominous thunderheads were building in the west, fed by the sweltering heat and humidity suffocating the eastern seaboard of the United States. No matter. They’d be back in the house within fifteen minutes, well before the storm unleashed its fury.

Savoy turned and nodded over his shoulder toward the grove of oak trees. Moments later an accomplice appeared pulling a young woman along by one wrist. She was clad in a short, tattered dress and stumbled forward zombie-like behind the man. The prostitute, whom Savoy’s accomplice had lured into his car the previous day, had been force-fed a sedative a few hours earlier. Now she was glassy-eyed and almost incoherent, barely able to stand.

The accomplice led the woman to a chair next to Savoy and placed her hands on the back of it. She grabbed it, swaying slightly from side to side, a gentle breeze blowing filthy brown hair across her pale face.

Savoy spit out a few remaining shells and lifted the binoculars to his eyes once more, checking each position. He had been told that the men were good, but he wanted to see for himself. He had learned not to give anyone the benefit of any doubt.

He nodded at his accomplice and they jogged back to the grove of oaks together. From behind a large tree he checked each position a third time. The rifles were up and ready. He let the binoculars fall to his chest and glanced at the young woman. She was struggling to maintain her balance, leaning forward against the chair exactly as one might do behind a podium.

“Fire,” he said quietly into the microphone.

Before he had finished the command the shots rang out as one, like a cannon blast, shredding the serenity of the Virginia afternoon with appalling force. Four .30-caliber slugs tore into the young woman’s frail body, and she tumbled backward, coming to rest facedown in some long grass.

Savoy sprinted out from behind the tree to where the dead woman lay, noting with satisfaction that the back of her head was completely gone. He rolled her over and inspected two neat holes in her face, one in the middle of her forehead, the other just beneath her still-open left eye. Finally, he pulled her dress up and gazed at two more holes between her breasts.

Savoy smiled as he inspected her ravaged body. They really were that good.

Jay gazed at the hand-scribbled note. It had been waiting for him when he arrived at McCarthy & Lloyd a little past seven, taped to the seat of his chair.

Buy shares of those two companies we talked about as well as shares of whatever that Boston company was you pitched to McCarthy last night over dinner. Do it in the share amounts we discussed and do it first thing this morning. Don’t screw this up, Jay. I don’t want to have to give the job to Sally. That would really piss me off.

Cordially,

Oliver

Jay had placed the buy orders at eight-fifteen, excited about TurboTec, less so about Simons, and not at all about Bell Chemical. McCarthy had agreed that Simons wasn’t an exciting play, so he wasn’t going to be happy about the purchase. And Jay knew nothing about Bell Chemical. He hadn’t had time to research Bell and substantiate Oliver’s claim that the company was an attractive takeover candidate. The only thing Jay knew about Bell Chemical was that it had been the name on the paper inside the envelope he had discovered in the Healey’s glove compartment.

He had executed the trades anyway, and now his fingerprints were all over the transactions. And only
his
fingerprints, he realized ruefully, rereading the note. Oliver hadn’t even specified Simons and Bell by name. But what the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn’t ignore Oliver’s direct order. He’d agreed to execute the share purchases for Oliver the previous night after dinner. And he wanted his million bucks. He didn’t want to give Oliver any excuse to fire him if indeed Bullock was correct and the contract had outs.

He dropped the note on the desk, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and groaned. He was dead tired from his night on the couch, and he was hungry as hell, too. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and he hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. Plus, the day had been crazy since the opening bell, and he’d been the only professional on the desk most of the time, the only one available to manage the chaos. The secretary had informed Jay that Oliver was working on a project for McCarthy and had taken Sally with him to midtown for a meeting. Bullock had been on and off the desk all day—mostly off—and Abby hadn’t come in once again. He couldn’t stifle a wide yawn, and covered his mouth with his hand.

“Hey there.”

Jay opened his eyes. Sally stood on the other side of the bulkhead. Oliver was nowhere in sight. “Hi,” he said coolly, trying not to think about how much fun he’d been having at this time the day before. He was irritated at her for having left the apartment with no warning that morning.

“Why are you so tired?” she asked quietly, looking around to see if anyone had heard her. “God, someone might think you spent the night on a lumpy couch last night,” she teased, her smile widening.

“Someone might at that.” He could hear the irritation in his own voice.

Sally walked around the end of the bulkhead to where he was sitting and leaned against the edge of the desk. “I had a wonderful time yesterday,” she whispered.

“So did I.” He allowed himself a quick look up into her eyes. They were beautiful.

“And I appreciated the fact that you opened up to me about your sister.”

“Yeah, well…” He gazed off into the distance.

“I’m sorry I used the express checkout option this morning at Hotel Jay West, but you were fast asleep,” she explained. “I didn’t want to wake you.” She checked the immediate area, then reached forward and quickly stroked his hand. “I wanted to say good-bye. I really did.”

“It’s okay.” He flashed her a quick grin, aware that sulking wouldn’t win him any points. “What time did you leave?” he asked, forcing himself to be jovial.

“Around five. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to get going.”

“You should have called me into the bedroom. Maybe a little exercise would have helped you get back to sleep.”

“Exactly what kind of exercise did you have in mind?” Her eyes narrowed slightly, but the corners of her mouth turned up.

“Nothing unusual. Just a little something to get the blood pumping.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you go all the way back to Hoboken?” Jay asked.

She nodded, hesitating a moment before answering. “Yeah, I… I noticed that I’d forgotten to pack some things, so I went home.”

“How did you get there?”

“I took the subway down to the World Trade Center and caught the PATH train from there.” She scanned the trading floor again and spotted Oliver and Bullock deep in discussion on the corridor paralleling the floor. “The trains weren’t crowded that early in the morning, and the trip didn’t take long.”

“I thought maybe you had called McCarthy and Lloyd’s car service,” Jay said.

“Why?” Sally asked, her eyes flashing from Oliver to Jay.

“I noticed that you used the phone. It was off its stand. I had left it in its stand to recharge.”

She hesitated once more. “You’re right, I did call the service. But the dispatcher said it was going to be forty minutes until he could get a car to your apartment. So I decided to be daring and take the train.”

Jay felt a strange sensation crawling up his spine—the same thing that had happened when Oliver had asked him to purchase Bell Chemical after dinner the night before. “What did you use the computer for?”

“What?”

Maybe it was his imagination, but she seemed to be stalling. “My personal computer was warm when I woke up. I was wondering why you used it.”

She laughed without a hint of amusement. “This is quite the third degree.”

“No, it—”

“I went on-line and checked out the morning headlines and what happened in the financial markets in Asia overnight,” she interrupted. “Oliver and I had this meeting in midtown first thing, and I wanted to be prepared. The papers don’t always report the overnight Pacific Rim closing numbers.”