Romeo's Tell (A disappearance mystery turned international thriller) Page 8

  Lacey had shown Chad the ropes early on and always displayed a positive attitude. He looked around the table now as if trying to garner support for what he was about to say. “Sounds okay. I’ve heard good things about pair programming. I mean it may take a little more time but . . .” Lacey trailed off without finishing his thought, apparently not holding deep conviction regarding the benefits of the changes Chad was proposing.

  The team members shared a patch of silence, relatively brief but uncomfortable, especially for Chad. He wanted some discussion on what he was proposing. To him, the lack of discussion meant either a lack of buy-in or a lack of understanding.

  Eventually, Brent Bonds, a systems programmer who projected the image of an all-business, heads-down coder, and who was a serious Legend of Zelda fanatic, commented in character. “Okay, got it. Can we go back to work now?” Bonds had graduated from the Bronx School of Science at the age of sixteen and had his masters in mathematics by the time he was twenty.

  Although Bonds’s question was meant to end the meeting, it actually served to jump-start the discussion. Malcolm York, the team’s lead developer and the most visibly concerned about the prospects of “big brother” looking over team members’ shoulders and stifling creativity, tried to poke a hole with a basic question. “So can you tell me again exactly why you want us to start doing these things?”

  Chad intentionally kept his response concise and to the point. “Two primary reasons: first, to minimize risk of breaking features that are already working and second, to provide a basic level of knowledge-sharing and backup by ensuring at least two of us know exactly how each and every module works.”

  York didn’t say anything in response, so Chad prompted him. “Does that make sense, Mal?”

  “It definitely makes work. I’m not sure it makes sense.”

  At least the guy says what he thinks, Chad thought.

  “All right, how about this? We’ll adopt the procedures and then review them in ninety days to see if we need to streamline anything, okay?”

  York responded with a half-hearted nod.

  After discussion of a few other issues, Chad adjourned his first meeting as Program Manager, totally clueless as to the difficulties he had just created for himself—and his fiancée.

  Chapter 26

  Three weeks Later

  June 15, 1987

  Istanbul, Turkey

  The seven sat at an oval table in the dimly lit conference room, the only such room in the medieval-era Galata Tower. If this secluded room in the ancient, nine-story, stone tower had windows, the occupants would have had a commanding view of the historic city and the bright and deep blues of the Bosphorus, similar to that which could be enjoyed from the restaurant and cafe a few floors above them. But for today’s purposes, this group, referred to simply as The Conclave, had no need to see the outside world.

  The seven, all from different countries and all beyond hyper-wealthy, never referred to each other using real names. Their de facto leader was Macbeth. Owing to his penchant for obscurity and his appreciation for the works and characters of Shakespeare, the others were dubbed Iago, Othello, Falstaff, Cornwall, Fluellen, and Claudius. At twenty-four, Claudius was the youngest and the designated successor to the group’s current enforcer, Iago.

  The seven met clandestinely every three months, usually in Paris but often in other cities—Caracas, Madrid, Jakarta, wherever Macbeth selected—always protected by their own dedicated security forces, which by now, worked in concert. The Conclave was not officially aligned with any country, although its interests often coincided with those of governments favoring chaos and disorder. These were the power elite, the puppet masters who, from far above the fray, pulled the strings that ultimately impacted the standard of living and day-to-day lives of billions of people—and, in toto, not for the better.

  They conducted their business in the language of world commerce: English. Today they would discuss many issues. One of those was a very small fly in their complex and vast ointment. This little fly’s name was Chad M. Swan.

  Macbeth, who allowed only a few minutes of precious time for any agenda item, opened discussion on item 27. “Othello, this issue appears to be something raised by Montjoy. Bring us up to speed. I allot three minutes for this item.”

  All eyes turned to the forty-something Othello, a native of Hong Kong, who spoke perfect English. Othello was the architect of the Conclave’s grand design, the group’s initiative to develop a state of the art system to support their most profitable line of business—acquiring and selling military and technological secrets, most of which were stolen from the United States government.

  Once in place, the system, dubbed TASCS (Technology Acquisition and Stealth Communication System), would serve as an absolutely secure hub for all of the group’s espionage activities. This would enable them to coordinate the efforts of their existing assets and operatives as well as recruit additional assets, most from the ranks of freelance technology thieves who would gain protections and access to vast resources by joining with the Conclave.

  Before speaking, Othello took in and let out a deep breath, gathering his thoughts as if retrieving the sequence from some organic internal disk drive. “As you know, our asset Montjoy is embedded in DARPA in the US. He delivered to us the FK encryption technology and now is working on the stealth communication tunnel at the heart of the TASCS effort. There has been an organizational change in the team he is attached to. The new Program Manager, this Chad Swan, has put procedures in place that are making it impossible for Montjoy to do what he must do.”

  “And the impact?” Macbeth asked coldly, as he massaged his chin.

  “Devastating. If the efforts of any of our other assets in the individual target entities were impeded, we could still move forward. But Montjoy—his role is critical. He is providing the virtual communication tunnel to link it all together.”

  “What must we do then?” Macbeth asked in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer. “Iago, as enforcer, what is your recommendation?”

  Iago, in thinning white hair and tan, leathery skin, began speaking in a soft, gravelly accent that suggested he was Russian—but no one really knew. The soft tone of his voice belied the voracity and cunning within.

  “We need to acquire leverage on this Chad Swan. I will charge Claudius with doing this.”

  “Leverage?” Claudius challenged. “We need to terminate him.”

  Iago, not at all more empathetic, but perhaps more calculating, reined in his apprentice. “No, no, my young friend. If we are to put in the effort, let us emerge with someone we can use to further our ends—a reluctant asset rather than a useless corpse.”

  “With all respect, I disagree. We should remove such dangers completely.”

  “For what? To just have that danger replaced with another? We’re better served by forcing the dangerous to do our bidding.”

  “How can you—”

  “Enough!” Macbeth cut Claudius off. “Claudius, you have your direction. When the transition from Iago to you is complete, you will make enforcement decisions. But on this day, the decision is his. You will acquire leverage over this Chad M. Swan.”

  Fluellen, the only one of the seven who held belief in prophecies, premonitions and the supernatural, had been reviewing some of the more detailed information provided about the subject and felt compelled to share foreboding observations regarding his name and date of birth. “Before we leave the topic, given events as portrayed in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, I can’t help but fear this man’s middle name is some bleak foreshadowing. Perhaps Claudius is right to—”

  “Fluellen,” Iago interrupted, trying to show as little frustration as possible. “Let’s not inject any undue superstitions here over a random coincidence. This Chad Swan’s middle name, Macduff, is simply his mother’s maiden name.”

  “And his birthday? The ides of March? Beware the—”

  “Fluellen, please! Stop with this nonsense.”

 
“Enough!” Macbeth was done with this issue. “We’re at three minutes. Discussion is closed. Claudius, you have your charge.”

  Chapter 27

  Eighteen Days Later

  July 3, 1987

  Claudius sat at the elegant desk in his executive suite at the Waldorf-Astoria on New York’s Park Avenue. He would be taking a flight from Kennedy Airport to Paris in the morning and needed a bit of time to prepare his thoughts for the meeting he would be attending late tomorrow evening. It was always best to attend in a prepared state when it came to meeting with Macbeth, especially when one is the apprentice enforcer.

  On his side was the fact that he had favorable news to report. To think that less than a month ago, he hadn’t even heard of Chad Swan and now he had a plan to bend Swan to the Conclave’s will—and he also had someone to carry out that plan.

  It had all fallen in place over the past week or so, after a slow first two weeks during which Claudius had made little progress beyond simply studying Swan’s movements and habits.

  As he thought about it, Claudius realized that things often worked this way. Study your subject long enough and something, some weakness, some opportunity, will emerge. It was no different with Swan.

  Nonetheless, the break that had come a little over a week ago was incredibly lucky. Claudius had followed Chad Swan to a community center gym on an evening when Swan had a judo class to instruct. Swan had been inside for about an hour when Claudius, who had simply been sitting in his car watching from the parking lot, witnessed something strange—and, as it turned out, fortuitous.

  A black Mercedes had pulled into the large lot and stopped in a parking space next to Swan’s aging VW minibus. The driver had accessed the spot from the other side of the parking aisle, so that the two vehicles faced opposite directions with their driver side doors just a few feet from each other.

  The lighting in the parking lot had been dim to the point of nonexistence, but with his night vision monocular from his mobile blind, Claudius detected a figure slipping out of the Mercedes. The door of the Mercedes remained open but the figure stayed low, making it impossible for Claudius, or anyone else for that matter, to see exactly what was going on.

  A minute later, the unknown subject had slipped back into his vehicle and driven slowly out of the lot. As the vehicle exited, Claudius recorded its plate number.

  The quick check Claudius had done on Swan’s vehicle after the mysterious visitor had gone revealed . . . vandalism. “MF” was now scratched deeply into the driver’s door in about eight-inch-high letters. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what “MF” stood for.

  Swan’s minibus was hardly a prize off the showroom floor, but this act nonetheless reeked of something deeper than a prank. And it did not appear that Swan’s vehicle had simply been selected at random. As juvenile as this behavior had been, it did suggest a certain vindictiveness—and the enforcer-designate sensed the faint aura of opportunity.

  Armed with the license plate number of the delinquent’s vehicle, Claudius had been able to track him down quite easily. Having worked with and against many different types of people, Claudius was a strong judge of character, and even on first contact, he knew something was amiss with this one.

  Claudius had encountered his sort rarely, only once or twice before, even among his sordid colleagues. This rare breed of dead hearts knew how to act to get along, and even how to be completely charming if they wanted to be, but cared about no one. Any empathy displayed was exactly that, a display—a learned mechanism for surviving in a society where the vast majority of your species were wired . . . differently.

  This was someone of potential use. Claudius decided this new asset would be known as Romeo.

  The only risky bit occurred when Claudius had raised the topic of Chad Swan and told Romeo that he had seen what Romeo had done to Swan’s minibus. Seeing the defiance and defensiveness quickly build in Romeo’s face, Claudius had been quick to add that this was in no way a criticism or threat and that he only brought it up because certain of his associates would very much like to persuade Swan to their point of view on some issues of interest to them—and that these associates would be willing to pay handsomely for help in this regard.

  Once Claudius’ actual agenda was out in the open, Romeo had just run with it. He had even come up with the core of the plan. It seemed that Romeo needed minimal encouragement when it came to doing something to cause problems for Chad Swan, be it a small thing, like scratching an obscene anagram into the side of Swan’s vehicle, or a somewhat bigger thing—like kidnapping his fiancé.

  Indeed, Romeo did not need a great deal of enticement to agree to an assignment that involved screwing up Chad Swan’s life, but he was nonetheless happy to accept the $250,000 payment offered by Claudius.

  Claudius suspected that Romeo might have some hidden agenda of his own in all of this, even beyond that of just causing difficulties for Swan. In fact, given what Claudius believed to be the underlying cause of Romeo’s deep resentment of Swan, the name Romeo seemed an ironically good fit.

  But whatever agendas lurked, hidden or not, didn’t really matter. As soon as Romeo had initiated his part of the plan and created the necessary leverage to pressure Swan into doing the Conclave’s bidding, Claudius would initiate several large transfers of funds into Swan’s accounts. So, once Swan had been properly coerced into giving that first inch, Claudius would ensure Swan appeared so entangled in the corruption that he would never be able to extract himself without spending many years in prison.

  It was not Claudius’ first choice, but it should work. Just terminating Swan was preferred as far as Claudius was concerned, but this leverage-seeking plan was now acceptable. And the concentration of ice in Romeo’s veins, coupled with the fact that he already knew Swan, seemed to bode well for the probability of success.

  Indeed, Romeo was a natural talent; he had no conscience. Not that Claudius was anything less than coldly ruthless himself. But Claudius’ callousness and lack of conscience had been learned and practiced. Romeo never needed to learn and certainly required no practice. He was natural and perfectly formed evil—regardless of whether Romeo himself fully realized the extent of his own vile nature.

  Claudius folded up his notebook, switched off the desk lamp, and turned in for the night. He was ready for his 6:00 AM flight to Paris.

  Chapter 28

  Now - and seventeen months earlier

  Chad and Becky Swan had been married twenty-one years and they really were living the dream. If it weren’t for the inhuman hours Chad had been working for the past six months on a secretive and demanding government project, things would have been pretty much perfect.

  Their daughter, Morgan, was twenty now and was doing well in her sophomore year at Amherst college, less than an hour from their home in Springfield.

  Becky’s poetry had recently been featured in a leading literary journal and she was finding her volunteer work as an advocate for the homeless and as an ESL instructor very rewarding.

  This morning was a typically busy one for Becky and Chad. Becky had an ESL class and Chad already knew he wouldn’t be making it in time for today’s status meeting. The meeting would start at 8:00 AM sharp, despite the fact that he’d only gotten home from the previous workday at 1:00 AM. Not a big deal. They would just go on without him until he got there.

  One additional complication on this particular morning was that the front passenger-side tire was going flat on Becky’s car.

  As Chad slurped down the last of his cup of morning joe, he heard Becky coming down the stairs.

  She breezed into the kitchen, appreciative that Chad, as usual, had already brewed coffee. “Good morning, darling.” She gave him a peck on the cheek as he raised his head from the newspaper.

  She looked to Chad like there was a glow around her. How surreal, he thought. How could things be better? But there was something he was forgetting. Something that wasn’t right. Unable to remember he just greeted his lovely wife.
“Good mornin’, beautiful. What’s your day look like today?”

  “A quick cup of coffee and I have to be off—”

  Becky interrupted herself, remembering the tire. “Oh, I forgot. There’s a tire going flat on the car. Can you take a quick look at it?”

  Chad glanced at his watch. “Sure, but you better just take my car. I’ll pump the tire up enough so I can drive to work and have someone fix it before the end of the day.”

  Becky didn’t really like driving Chad’s Triumph. The old TR6 was fun to drive, but she preferred something a little bigger, something more . . . substantial, like her Acura.

  But right now, time was of the essence. And it was just a fifteen-minute drive to the community center. Becky took Chad up on his offer and headed out to teach her ESL class, after giving him a slightly longer-than-usual goodbye kiss. Their last.

  Just two minutes after Becky left, Chad finally remembered what was going to happen. He ran out to the garage, jumped into the Acura and sped out of the driveway.

  The failing tire made the normally responsive Acura sluggish and sloppy on turns, but he knew he was catching up. The last leg of the trip to the community center was a winding country road. That’s where it would happen. He had to get there before it did.

  After just a few minutes, he knew he was close. He was on the winding road now. As he made his way around the second bend, he saw the Triumph. Then it faded around the next curve. As he made his way around that curve, he saw the red TR6 again and flashed the Acura’s headlights. But Becky must have been looking ahead to negotiate the next curve. The Triumph soon vanished beyond another bend in the country road.

  As he made his way around that curve and saw the Triumph again, he was somehow closer to it than before. He was sure now that he could catch her. But just before he got to the straightaway, the Acura’s tire failed completely, sending the metal edge of the wheel sideways into the roadway as a shower of sparks flew overhead. The Acura came to an abrupt and absolute stop. Its front-end linkage a tangled mess, the once dependable vehicle was now un-drivable.