Now he’s right back into it.
But with no sense of direction, no compass.
A clue to the answer may lie somewhere among all this stuff on his desk. Or it may not. But so far that’s all he’s got.
He sorts through the papers again and reorganises them.
The event at Drumcoolie Castle was the Fifth International Conference on Corporate and Business Ethics, previous ones having been held in places such as Seattle and Johannesburg. It was a three-day event – a wall-to-wall roster of papers, panels, lunches, receptions and dinners, and with an extremely impressive list of attendees. But reading through the programme and subsequent newspaper reports, Jimmy gets no real sense of what the event was like, no sense that it was anything other than as intensely boring as it seems now on paper.
He goes through the list of attendees again.
Apart from a few obvious and well-known ones, the only name that sticks out on the list is one of the two that Bolger mentioned – Clark Rundle. The other name he mentioned, Don Ribcoff, doesn’t appear on the list – or, indeed, in any of the other materials Jimmy has assembled about the conference. But that doesn’t have to be significant. Nothing he has found out about Rundle means anything to him either.
Clark Rundle is the Chairman and CEO of BRX, which is a privately owned engineering and mining conglomerate with operations in over seventy countries around the world. Founded in the late nineteenth century by his great-grandfather, Benjamin Rundle, the company quickly went from producing machine parts to building railroads, highways, pipelines and hydro-electric dams. Over the decades there seems to have been a revolving door of sorts between the boards of BRX and various administrations in Washington, but that, Jimmy assumes, is standard operating procedure at this level.
None of which, in the context of what Jimmy is concerned about here, means or proves anything.
Same with the second guy. A quick internet search reveals Don Ribcoff to be the CEO of Gideon Global, a private security company with operations in dozens of countries worldwide – including Iraq and Afghanistan. Lately, according to one report that Jimmy finds, Gideon have been withdrawing from direct military engagement and increasing their presence in the areas of corporate competitive intelligence and domestic surveillance.
But again, so what? This is shit he has found on Wikipedia. It brings him no nearer to formulating even the bones of a theory about what might have happened. He could gather similar information on the dozens of other executives at the conference, but what good would it do? While there must be some reason Bolger singled out these two names, Jimmy doesn’t believe he’s going to find it on the internet.
He gets up and goes over to the window.
As he gazes out across the bay, which is disappearing behind a shroud of evening mist, Jimmy re-runs the conversation with Bolger in his head.
‘Think about it. She wasn’t the only one.’
‘The only one what?’
‘The only one who died in the fucking crash, you gobshite.’
And suddenly it seems so obvious.
He goes back to his desk, shuffles through some papers and finds what he’s looking for.
The passenger list.
It was a privately leased helicopter, piloted by Liam Egan, with five passengers on board. Apart from Susie Monaghan, there was Ted Walker, Gianni Bonacci, Ben Schnitz and Niall Feeley. He has extensive notes on each of these men, and he glances through them now. But nothing new jumps out at him.
It’s stuff he’s been over a hundred times before.
Ted Walker was a top executive at Eiben-Chemcorp, thirty-eight years old and big into extreme sports. The trip was believed to have been organised by him in order to showcase to fellow danger junkie Ben Schnitz some ideal paragliding spots along the north Donegal coastline. Schnitz was a senior vice president at Paloma Electronics.
Also assumed to have been an extreme sports enthusiast, Gianni Bonacci was director of a UN Corporate Affairs Com-mission, and Niall Feeley, an executive at Hibinvest, was known to have been a close friend of both Ted Walker’s and Gary Lynch’s – Gary Lynch having been the guy Susie Monaghan had just broken up with.
The theory at the time was that Susie went along with Feeley in a desperate attempt to make Lynch jealous.
Fine.
But according to Bolger, Susie was collateral damage. So does this eliminate Niall Feeley too? Was he collateral damage as well? Is Ted Walker’s brother being a friend of Phil Sweeney’s significant? And what about the other two?
Jimmy looks over the papers again. He doesn’t know what to think. Nothing presents itself as significant, and everything does. Which isn’t much of a help.
He needs to widen his frame of reference. He needs to get out there and talk to someone.
But where does he start?
It takes him a few minutes of rummaging around – through notebooks, the phone directory, online – to come up with a couple of numbers.
Ted Walker’s brother, Freddie. This is a brash move and it will probably piss Phil Sweeney off no end, but he feels it’s legitimate.
He dials the number. It rings and then goes into message. He hangs up.
The second number he has unearthed is for Gary Lynch.
It’s the same story.
But this time he leaves a message.
Please give me a call.
Rundle sits at his usual table at the Orpheus Room, nursing a gimlet, waiting for J.J. to arrive. Don Ribcoff did his best this afternoon, but apparently the senator couldn’t be dissuaded from engaging with the media pack at JFK or from then doing a couple of hastily arranged appearances on cable news shows. Rundle caught one of these back at the office and although the whole time he was watching it his heart was in his mouth nothing disastrous happened. Apart from the brace on his hand and wrist, J.J. looked good. He was calm, composed, and constantly made the point that he didn’t want all of this hoopla to be a distraction from the more serious issues he and his fellow delegates had been so focused on in Paris. It was a performance, of course, but Rundle was relieved to see that J.J. seemed to be in full control of his faculties.
He’s due any minute now, so hopefully they can clear things up and move on. Because Rundle has invested a huge amount in this already – time, energy, money.
He set up the Buenke operation at James Vaughan’s behest, and has kept it ticking over for him, but the bottom line is if he blows the current negotiations Vaughan won’t forgive him – he’ll cut him loose and leave him in the wilderness, as he has done with so many others in the past.
Rundle reaches for his gimlet.
He’s in too deep now to let this slip away.
He looks over at the entrance. There is a flurry of activity. This will be the senatorial entourage – handlers, advisors, security. He spots Herb Felder and one or two other people he knows. After a moment the seas part and J.J. appears. He strolls over, nodding and smiling at various people on the way. He arrives and sits down, but with his back to the room.
Rundle’s eye is immediately drawn to the brace, an elaborate and uncomfortable-looking affair of wire and gauze, but it’s the expression on J.J.’s face that he finds particularly disturbing. Away from the cameras now, and sitting with a family member, pressure off, he seems pale, reduced somehow, as if he needs to be taken in hand.
‘How are you, J.J.?’
‘I’m all right, Clark. I’m tired. It’s been a crazy few days.’ A waiter approaches but J.J. waves him away. ‘This has been good for me, but I can’t let it drift. I can’t let it dissipate. I’ve got to take it to the next level, you know, keep the traction but change the conversation.’
Rundle stares at him. ‘Change the conversation?’