Shell Game (41 page)

Ricardo had repeated his cell number in case something changed, then hung up. Kelly had gone back to work at the National Security Agency. It was business as usual. No one had noticed the quick blip of computer time he had borrowed to track the money. No one was the wiser. Nothing had really changed, except for the five people who had lost their lives. He felt some remorse at the thought of two Mexican police officers being gunned down while simply doing their jobs. He felt nothing but loathing for Carlos and Alan. Every time he thought of Taylor, trying so desperately to get back to the north end of the ruins, falling to her death on the sharp rocks, he felt a wave of sadness and despair.

He finished his tea and took the empty cup to the kitchen, rinsed it out and dried it. He had worked late the night before, and no one expected him in before noon. He switched the stereo over to his favorite FM station and caught the weather forecast. Seven degrees and snowing. He shrugged into his coat, slipped on his boots and opened the front door. A blast of cold air hit him, stinging his lungs as he breathed. The tip of an envelope stuck out of his mailbox, and he opened the flap and dug out the mail. He went to throw it on the stairs, then stopped. One piece caught his attention. He closed the door, the wind and snow trapped outside.

Kelly set a handful of mail on the stairs and held the one of interest in his hand. His name was handwritten in scrawling text and the postmark was from Vienna, Austria. He knew the handwriting—he had seen it many times while at G-cubed. There was no return address. He took off his boots and coat and returned to the living room where the light from the front window was strong. He sat on the sofa and fingered the envelope for a minute before opening it. He suspected he knew who had sent it.

Please God, let it be her
.

He ripped open the end of the envelope and pulled the single sheet of paper from inside. With trembling hands he unfolded it. There was very little printing on the page, but what was there was of incredible value.

 

Kelly
,

Sometimes life can be a little twisted. Things not always what they seem. Kind of like those street performers who put a peanut under one of three shells, then mix them up and have you guess which one is hiding the peanut. They always make one move you don't see. That's why you can never guess which shell it's under. Maybe that's why they call a con like this a . Hope you understand
.

There are three account numbers on this page. The one marked 10M is yours. 5M is for Ricardo. 500K is for Adolfo
.

A good rate of pay for a night's work
.

Sorry about the transfer out. Should have warned you I'd be doing that
.

Thanks for all your help
.

Taylor

 

Kelly held the single sheet of paper in his hand, a slow grin creeping over his face. Taylor had set up Edward Brand. It was not at all the way it appeared. Brand had never held the aces in his hand. Taylor had perpetuated one of the largest frauds he had seen, and he had been witness to some pretty brazen schemes. And she had done it with total anonymity. To this day, Brand didn't know she was the one who stole his money. How could he? She had left no clues.

Taylor was alive. And she had the money. Two hundred and sixty-three million dollars. And ten million dollars was sitting in an offshore account—with his name on it. Five million for Ricardo. A half million for Adolfo.

Taylor had done it. Taken a con man for everything he was worth. And survived.

He walked to the kitchen, found the scrap of paper and reached for the phone. He dialed a long-distance number. When the voice answered, he said, “Ricardo, it's Kelly. I've got some good news for you.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY-FOUR

The Caribbean sun was wonderfully strong. She glanced down at her arm and poked it with her index finger. A tinge of white showed, like a dot on a piece of colored paper. Time to get out of the sun. But finally, for the first time in her life, she was tanning. Red hair was nice, but the pasty white skin that went with it was a pain in the ass in a tropical climate. Taylor retreated to the giant palapa next to the pool and poured a glass of lemonade. She sat in one of the wicker chairs and stared out over the teal waters of the Caribbean.

What a ride. The last three and a half years had been everything she expected. And more. With the exception of Alan's death, she couldn't have scripted a better ending. No, there was nothing else she would change. And that was saying something, considering the whole thing had started so innocently so long ago. She let her mind drift back.

Alan Bestwick had tried to pick her up in a bar while she was having drinks with a few of her staff after work one night, but she had shut him down on the spot. A week later he reappeared in a more appropriate setting—one of her favorite restaurants. He stopped by the table, talked for a while, then left. With her phone number. He had called—and they started dating. And that led to them getting married. All pretty simple, but for one thing.

Taylor had known from minute one what Alan Bestwick was doing. She checked his name in the Alumni records at Stanford—his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering was a fake. Then she paid a local private investigator to dig up the facts on exactly who Alan Bestwick really was. And what she had found was more than a little interesting. Alan Bestwick's real name was Francois Vallencoure, an American with strong ties to France. And he was joined at the hip with a man named Robert Zindler—a very successful con man who went by numerous aliases. In this case, with the NewPro scam, he had chosen Edward Brand.

Taylor knew from the start what they were after. Her money. And from that moment on, she was a lioness on the hunt. She called in a favor and had G-cubed grossly overvalued. Its actual dollar value on the market was less than six million. But Alan and Brand would never have bitten if that were all she was worth. So she played the game, knowing all the while that her turn would come.

Kelly Kramer was her ace in the hole. When she interviewed him, his résumé was convincing, almost too perfect. She contacted his previous employer and received a glowing reference. The little things were setting off warning lights, and she looked deeper. She had a private investigator check the company on his résumé, and after considerable digging about, he discovered it was a front for the American government. A department of the country's security forces designed to give references to previous employees of the CIA and NSA. She knew she had an in to one of the agencies. She didn't care which. She hired Kelly on the spot.

From that moment on, it had been her game, not theirs. She let Edward Brand and Alan guide her through the various stages of the con, from the antique dealer in Mexico City to Alan's apparent death on the cliff near Cabo San Lucas. She traveled to Paris, knowing his strong ties to the French capital. The trip was necessary, otherwise how could she have convinced Kelly that she knew Alan was alive? From that point on, Kelly and his co-workers at NSA were very accommodating.

Most importantly, she had always stayed in character. She convinced herself that she had been taken, that her life was in ruins. She became the woman everyone thought she should be—the widow, the victim. She vilified herself—actually stretched the game to the point where she believed her own falsehoods. She walked a dangerous line between reality and the fiction she was creating. That believability was the key. Brand, Alan and Hawkins all saw her as the grieving widow who had lost her money and her husband. They never suspected. Not even once. In retrospect, her performance was nothing short of brilliant.

Cashing the million-dollar insurance check was the most difficult thing for her. It was fraud, and she knew it. But not to cash it was folly. By that time, Kelly had uncovered Brent Hawkins, and he would be watching. So the money went in her account.

Then, in mid-December, when the right amount of time had slipped by, she suggested to Kelly that they go after Alan and Brand. Beat them at their own game. When Kelly agreed, she knew she had the resources of NSA at her command. The rest had simply been a series of logical steps to the inevitable conclusion. Get Edward Brand on top of that mountain, on a satellite phone, and have Kelly intercept the call. She knew that all the information Kelly needed to empty Brand's accounts would be transmitted digitally during the call. It was up to Kelly from that point on. He had to produce. And he did.

The two hundred and sixty-three million dollars had gone directly into the account she set up right after discovering what Alan and Brand were up to. But that account was simply a front. It was coded to immediately forward any deposits to another Caribbean account, through a complicated and untraceable series of satellite transactions.

Taylor finished her lemonade and set the glass on the counter. It had been a long, tough grind. Living with Alan as his wife had been incredibly difficult. She knew now that it was because she lived the lie, that she had been successful in becoming the woman Brand and Alan expected her to be. She felt an overpowering sense of guilt over Alan's death. It was something she lived with every day—the one thing she truly regretted. She justified it by telling herself that he never loved her—that he had just used her to get what he wanted. It felt strange to finally admit to herself that she had done the exact same thing. They had both known the risks going in.

Risk. It was the key word to the one clue she had given Alan. She vividly remembered her exact words when sitting in their living room with Sam Morel, the DA and the two FBI agents.
When I see something I consider to be risky, I check it out. If it falls within my boundaries of acceptable risk, I go for it
. I, not we. She had given all of them the opportunity to catch on. Not one of them had noticed. Not the slightest blip on the radar.

What had transpired atop Monte Alban was not what she had wanted or planned. If Alan had stayed out of the picture, things would have ended that night with a respectful parting of the ways, and Brand wouldn't have known he'd been scammed until the next day. Too late to find Adolfo or Ricardo. And no mention of her and Kelly. Despite the heat, she shuddered when she thought back to Alan arriving at the ruins. Adolfo's walkie-talkie was still open, and she had followed the entire conversation as she made her way back along the west side of the mountain. When Alan arrived and recognized Ricardo, she thought her cover was blown. But Alan said that Ricardo had driven
him
around Mexico City, not
him and Taylor
. She had dodged a very real bullet. If Brand ever tied Ricardo back to her, he'd be searching. And he'd eventually find her. When Alan died on the mountain, that connection back to her had died as well.

She had stolen two hundred and sixty-three million dollars from a thief. Then she paid back the buyer of G-cubed the seven-point-five million-dollars they had overvalued the company, plus a two million-dollar bonus. She deposited fifteen and a half million dollars into three accounts to cover her debts to Kelly and Ricardo and Adolfo. The final ends were tied up; the deal was done. Now she could live her life as she pleased.

One of her live-in staff approached the palapa, a cordless phone in her hand. “It is a call for you,” she said. “He asked for Taylor.”

She smiled. He'd found her. She knew he would. She took the phone and punched the talk button. “Hello, Kelly.”

“Hello, Taylor. How are things?”

“Very well. And with you?”

“Couldn't be better.”

“So you found me,” she said, a tinge of feigned surprise in her voice. It was solely for Kelly's benefit. He had probably worked very hard to locate her.

“It wasn't easy. Took a couple of months. With the resources of the NSA behind me. I see you put your life in San Francisco on hold. New name, new life. I guess that's the way it has to be. If Edward Brand ever caught on to your little shell game, he wouldn't be happy.”

“My shell game. I think it's a good description, Kelly. Sums things up nicely.” She took a couple of deep breaths of the fresh sea air. “What are you up to these days?”

“Well, I'm recently retired from my job with the government. Don't need the money anymore. I seem to have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. It's a problem.”

She laughed. “Do you want to visit?”

He didn't answer for a few seconds. A light breeze blew in from the sheltered cove. Finally, he said, “I'd like that, Taylor. I'd like that very much.”

She smiled, but simply said, “Do you know where I am?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'll see you in a day or two?”

“Give me a week.”

“A week, then. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Taylor pushed the talk button and set the phone on the table. Three and a half years ago she had seen an opportunity. She had gone for it, and she had won. And to the victor came the spoils. She glanced about the beachfront house, a marvel of white stucco and glass touching onto the soft sand that ran down to the warm waters of the Caribbean. A Lamborghini and a Porsche sat in the driveway. Amazing what cash could buy.

And the money in the bank. More money than she would ever need. She could donate to charities, travel, try her hand at writing a novel—whatever she wanted.

Ahh, the spoils were nice. Very nice indeed.