The heads of the military and police chartered with stopping the trade were often also those who benefited the most from it. So the idea that it could be quashed with more soldiers or police was naïve — it was like trying to drink yourself sober, and had been a resounding failure since it first became the tactic of choice in the nations that sat in the trafficking routes between Colombia and the United States.
Three cats purred and rubbed around Mona’s legs, trying to comfort her in her moment of grief. The animals were empathic, could sense the pain radiating from her countenance as she sat in her small apartment and sobbed for her lost employer. She’d been with him for over twenty years, which was the majority of her adult life. Now, she was on her own, adrift in a world of uncertainty, with limited prospects and a skill-set of dubious utility.
The publishing business had been undergoing a shift brought about by eReaders supplanting paper books, which had translated into slimmer margins for the publishers. Literary agents of the old school were becoming obsolete. Not because their skillsets weren’t valuable or required, but rather because an increasing number of established authors were eying the self-publishing world with a more pragmatic, jaundiced eye. They recognized the financial benefits of releasing their own books rather than putting them through the traditional distribution chain. In reality, it was a question, for an author with a name, of getting roughly seven and a half percent of the book sale price versus seventy. That ten-times-the-money equation had everyone scrambling as the industry was blindsided and traditional book stores closed down in droves. The literary market had shifted from one where paper and ink and shelf space and distribution were the draws, to one where consumers shopped online and took instant delivery of their reading material on an eReader.
That was a win for customers, but a lose for the industry, as the value of the publishers diminished in the eyes of the writers. And if the holy grail for writers stopped being a deal where they got ten percent of the money they would by self-publishing, then the value of agents, whose sole cachet was that they had access to the publishers, also diminished, creating havoc for Mona’s little world. All she’d ever done was work for Abe, other than a few brief stints as a secretary back when floppy diskettes were all the rage. Now her mentor, employer, protector and friend was gone, causing Mona to come face to face with a future of uncertainty in a difficult job market in an industry in decline.
It wasn’t as though she had an extravagant lifestyle to support, or a high burn. It was just that she’d always found saving difficult, so she was unprepared for this sudden shift in her fortunes. And she was still so shocked about Abe, she hadn’t been able to collect herself. Once home from work, everything she saw reminded her of Abe’s final moments. Just like she did, Abe lived by himself with a few pets. He had died without anyone to hold his hand during his final moments — without anyone to care that he was embarking on his final journey. She could see her future being the same. Nobody would be there to mourn her or tell her that they loved her or demonstrate that she’d made an indelible impression on their lives. She would pass from the earth, cold and alone. And so, Mona cried, for Abe as much as for herself.
Eventually, she ran out of energy, and the cats needed care. Mister Paws was purring as he scratched his head against her easy chair. Sugah Bear made a bid for attention by leaping onto her lap. The third feline, a big orange tabby named Carrot Top — after the comedian who Mona found hysterical — glared at her, aloof, from the far corner of the room, commanding her silently, with his hypnotic gaze, to prepare his dinner.
Mona decided that she deserved a treat, and so after attending to her brood, she packed herself into her coat and headed for the little Italian restaurant two blocks away, whose rigatoni Bolognese was to die for. Tonight wasn’t the night to worry about a few extra pounds, she reasoned, nor about the effects of a bottle of Chianti on her ample figure. She needed comfort food and knew where to get it.
So involved was Mona in her private drama that she didn’t register the two men who’d taken up position behind her as she walked, nor the creeping of the large, black SUV on the street twenty yards behind her.
Michael rode the subway to the lower East Side, and then changed lines to get to Brooklyn. When he arrived at his stop in Williamsburg, he exited the train and made his way to the street. He flagged down a cab and gave the driver the address — a friend’s studio apartment which his buddy kept for trips to New York. Michael had a key. He stopped in once a month to check on the place and ensure that everything still worked and that it hadn’t been burgled or destroyed by fire, or that the decade-old Nissan Sentra in the decrepit garage down the block still started — assuming it hadn’t been stolen.
His friend had extended an invitation to use both whenever he wasn’t in town, and Michael knew he wouldn’t be back in the area for another month, so the little pied-à-terre presented the perfect place to stay until he could get a feel for how bad his situation actually was.
The small apartment was located in an area that had been the recipient of the gentrification that had been taking place in most of New York since the mid-1990s. Run-down sections of walk-up housing had transformed into middle class living to accommodate those for whom the City had gotten far too expensive. He made a perfunctory scan of the street before he walked up the stairs to the front door of the building. Seeing nothing unusual, he ascended to the entry and used one of the two keys he had taken from his foyer table to open it. Up two more flights, and he was inside and safe. At least for now.
Wasting no time, he cleared a section of the computer station and plugged his laptop into the modem, waiting anxiously while his system booted up. He opened one of the three windows to blow out the stagnant air and flopped down on the couch with Abe’s bag. He extracted the manuscript and laid the tote on the floor beside him. Time to find out what all the fuss was about.
Michael read the first section for forty-five minutes. His mood shifted from curiosity, to dim anxiety, to dread. Fifty pages in, he was already beginning to appreciate just how damaging the allegations were, and if true, how relentless the subjects of the document’s claims would be to stop it from getting any exposure.
The manuscript outlined the history of a global drug trafficking, money laundering and murder-for-hire scheme that went back several decades, and which included virtually every major criminal syndicate, terrorist group, drug cartel, hostile regime, banking group and financial figure on the planet. The text was extensively footnoted and contained references to purported video footage of clandestine assassinations and murders. There were documents demonstrating the iron-clad guilt of household names, photographs and mission notes from foreign and domestic criminal activities and executions carried out by U.S. personnel, who were part of secret death squads. There were blackmail histories dating back to the 1980s, and on and on and on.
Michael stopped reading and concentrated on slowing his heart rate to something normal — he was flush with adrenaline and in borderline panic mode. No wonder Abe had been stunned by this. If even half the claims were correct, it made most of the conspiracy theories since World War II seem like a book of children’s fairy tales. It would prove, not only a global agenda to drain wealth from the U.S. via every nameable means by a laundry list of the worst criminal syndicates on the planet, but also the active participation of key figures in the government, from the president on down, from as far back as Nixon, in treason, war crimes, murder, sedition, drug trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting, fraud and theft, to name only a few.