“Very impressive,” said Burn, admiring the technology. “A master smart phone programmed for remote activation of the speakerphone on a slave cell that goes everywhere Michael goes. And they have no idea that as long as the phone has a battery in it, we can hear every word they’re saying, even though it’s just sitting there. I have to confess,” said Burn, “your spyware is every bit as good as mine.”
The white commercial van was parked less than a mile from WhiteSands’ headquarters, and Ivy was alone with Burn in the rear cargo compartment.
“It’s really pretty basic,” said Ivy.
And it wasn’t just about eavesdropping. Ivy’s spyware also had GPS tracking capability, enabling the master to follow the slave wherever the slave took his cell. Tracking Michael all the way from North Bergen to Somerset County had been a snap. It was so reliable that Burn had even felt comfortable stopping on the way for food. He was finishing off the last of the hand-stretched naan, a round flatbread that was a staple in northern India, but in the United States was mainly for rich folks who shopped in trendy grocery stores in places like Somerset County.
“What are you going to do with me?” asked Ivy.
She was seated on the metal floor of the van, her back to the side panel. Her jaw felt slightly out of alignment from the left cross that Burn had delivered, and her ribs were still sore from the takedown to the pavement in the hospital parking lot. She worked at the plastic handcuffs that fastened her wrists behind her back, but there was no slack whatsoever.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” said Burn.
She knew his reputation, but she didn’t let her mind go there.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said in an icy tone. “You will wish you really had been lost at sea and eaten by sharks.”
Ivy was silent. There was nothing she could say. She should never have gone back toward the hospital in search of Michael. She should have kept running, just as she’d run for the past four years. In hindsight, seeing Michael face-to-face had probably been a mistake. Emotion had taken over, and even though splitting up outside the ER and heading off in opposite directions had been the correct tactical move, she’d doubled back in hope of finding him and escaping together. A silly romantic notion-and a complete blunder that had allowed Burn to capture her. And now he had hijacked her spyware as well. She wished now that she hadn’t given Michael her spare cell, though it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Suddenly, her mother’s voice was on the speaker. Olivia obviously had no idea that her words were being picked up by Michael’s cell and transmitted from the corporate dining room to Ivy’s phone a mile away.
“We’d better get going,” Ivy heard her mother say.
Burn also heard. “Let’s do what Mamma says,” he said to Ivy.
One last time, Burn checked the tension on the cuffs behind Ivy’s back. Satisfied, he moved to the van’s cockpit, placed Ivy’s phone on the dash, and climbed behind the wheel.
“We’ll see you all there,” he said as he turned the ignition.
60
“WE’RE ALL SET,” SAID WALD, AS HE TUCKED AWAY HIS CELL PHONE.
He was seated beside his uncle in the cabin of a Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma helicopter. They’d just touched down on a helipad in Somerset County after a short flight from Manhattan that had reduced the famous skyline to a blur of lights on the horizon. The whir of the rotors was almost down to nothing, making it unnecessary to use headsets or even raise their voices when talking.
“Very good,” said McVee.
It was his nephew’s second update of the night. The first had been within minutes of the shoot-out at the hospitaclass="underline" Ivy Layton wasn’t dead, but her run had come to an end. Burn had her at his mercy and under his control, and the death van was en route to an appropriate disposal site. McVee had been just fine with that-until the surprise phone call from Michael Cantella’s brother: “Michael knows it’s you,” he’d told McVee, “and if anything happens to him, me, or anyone in our family, the FBI is going to be all over you.”
Wald glanced out the window at the rising moon, then back at his uncle.
“Are you sure about this?”
McVee’s expression tightened. “There are two ways to read that call from Cantella’s brother. One, he’s already gone to the FBI. Or two, it was a threat. A very serious threat.”
“I understand, but-”
“No ‘buts,’” said McVee. “If he’s already gone to the FBI, there’s nothing we can do about it. But if it’s a threat, and if we back away from it, extortion is right around the corner. The first payment is never enough to keep a blackmailer from telling the police what he knows. They keep coming back, and the price tag is always higher the next time. In this case, it’ll just keep going up and up until it’s out of sight-especially when Cantella and his brother get a better understanding of exactly how much we stand to profit from credit default swaps after Saxton Silvers’ bankruptcy.”
Wald smiled. “A cool bonus that taking care of Ivy Layton is so profitable.”
Remarks like that made it so clear to McVee that his nephew could never lead Ploutus. The kid always had everything backward. “Getting rid of Ivy Layton is the bonus on top of the business, genius.”
“Huh?”
“Even before she was in the picture I had plans to short sell an investment bank into oblivion. Ivy’s showing up just made it that much easier to decide Saxton Silvers should be first on the list.”
“How much do we stand to make?”
“More than you can fathom,” said McVee, “and it’s none of your business. Your job is to deal with the threat.”
“Well, we’re all set. I spoke directly to Burn. There’s been a temporary stay of execution for Ivy Layton. He is to use her as bait.”
“There’s no compromising on this point. My gut tells me that Cantella and his brother haven’t gone to the FBI yet, and I’m not about to pay them hush money for the rest of my days. Burn has to be prepared to eliminate all of them.”
“The mother, too?”
“She’s no innocent. Ivy never would have gotten away without her help. And something tells me it was the mother who taught Ivy all her tricks in the first place.”
“Understood,” said Wald. “All of them. I’ll tell him it’s ‘as per Michael Cantella,’” he added, referring to the infamous e-mail.
McVee unbuckled his seat belt, then stopped before rising. “Did you work out a price?”
“He said you two already came to an understanding when you went for a ride in the limo.”
“What understanding?”
“At first I thought he was making a joke,” said Wald, “but he was serious. Something about the new line on our balance sheet: Money to Burn.”
McVee almost smiled, recalling the conversation and his own play on words. He took Burn’s meaning: this job would cost so much that McVee would have to pay it quarterly, maybe even in annual installments. But it would be worth it.
“Fine,” said McVee. “Money to Burn it is.”
61
WE ENTERED THE HANGAR THROUGH THE MAINTENANCE OFFICE, AND Eric switched on the overhead lights.
At the end of a long private access road from the corporate training center, the WhiteSands heliport was one of two dozen heliports in Somerset County and one of about 365 statewide. Not all were equipped for nighttime landings and takeoffs, and some were little more than open space in a flat field of grass. As would be expected, the private facility at WhiteSands was equipped with far more amenities than it needed, including five separate hangars, each one large enough to accommodate a medium-size helicopter. We entered Hangar No. 3, which housed our ticket to escape-a pimped-out Sikorsky S76 that the head of WhiteSands’ Sovereign Fund Division “just had to have” after touring Malaysia in one with the sultan of Johor.