The Directive (6 page)

MY FIRST DAY
on the job as a criminal co-conspirator was turning out to be pretty boring. I parked across the street from Sacks’s town house, one of a dozen in the complex. It had its own entrance, which made surveillance easier. It was 7:30 a.m., a good time to catch people going to work. After a half hour with no sign of activity inside, my impatience turned to boldness, and I headed toward his stoop.

I noticed flyers for pizza places sticking out under his door. He had a drop-in mailbox hanging on the siding. I tapped on it. The metal returned a muted clank. It was half full.

Sacks hadn’t been around for a few days in the middle of the week. I guessed he had run. I peered down through the blinds. No sign of a hasty packing job, probably planning on coming back. I didn’t have days to wait him out, though. I was supposed to be prepping a deposition for the dark-money case, but between this stakeout nonsense and a bar association lunch that Annie had reminded me about this morning, I didn’t know when I’d be able to take care of it.

Sacks was an economist at the Federal Reserve. The Fed regulates a lot of banks, so I guessed he had access to some sort of inside data. I pulled up my laptop, which had a broadband card, and checked for a directory on the Fed website. Nothing jumped out at me. The “Contact Us” page had a few numbers, most of which I assumed were just dumped to voicemail. Several shared the same area code and first four digits of the number.

That usually meant that by dialing those first four numbers followed by 000 you could reach the switchboard.

So now I had a number to call, but who was I?

I had done an Accurint search on Sacks last night. That’s one of the big data-mining sources. If there’s a piece of information about you floating in a commercial or government database anywhere in the world, they buy it, pull it into one place, and make it all searchable. Once you learn how to read those reports, those few pages will tell you someone’s life story and a good portion of their secrets. I had Sacks’s addresses from his childhood home on, and lists of his relatives, associates, co-workers, neighbors, anyone he lived with, as well as their phone numbers, employment histories, criminal records, and most of their Social Security numbers.

From the last names and birthdays, I could see that Sacks had two daughters and a wife, and a single-family home in Falls Church. Then last summer he started living alone in a new luxury town house in Southwest DC. That sounded like divorce, which would explain financial motives.

Work is a good first place to look for a workaholic. I went to LinkedIn, and they spun off a list of a dozen of Sacks’s colleagues and associates. I picked a guy who worked at the Treasury in the same policy area and could have had a good reason to be getting in touch with my man.

I was now Andrew Schaefer. I hesitated for a moment before I made the call. It felt like crossing a line, my first action for Lynch. I Googled a few more terms and found an actual org chart of the Fed staff, with phone numbers.

That cinched it. I had no good excuse and plenty of ways to work this. I dialed the main switchboard. “Monetary Policy,” said the man who answered the phone.

“Laurie Stevens, please.” She was the admin in Sacks’s office.

“One minute.”

“This is Laurie.”

“Hi, Laurie,” I said. Being transferred from the main switchboard meant my number would show up as an internal extension on her phone, which made it more trustworthy. “This is Andrew Schaefer at OEP. I was wondering if I could get some time on Jonathan Sacks’s schedule today.”

“Did you try e-mailing him?”

Clearly I had no idea how things were done in this office.

“Yeah. I haven’t heard back. Having trouble getting ahold of him. Sort of need to get this squared away today for the CPI.”

“He’s been out for a few days. Flu or something. E-mail’s probably your best bet.”

“Do you have his cell phone number?”

“His cell phone? I don’t think so. You can talk to the deputy director if it’s urgent.”

I’d overstepped. Time to throw it into reverse.

“No. I’m all set. Just double-checking something with Jonathan. I’ll wait for him to get back on e-mail.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks.”

He’d bailed on work. Sacks really was hiding out. I looked at my list of his family and associates in the area. With fewer than twenty-four hours, I didn’t have time for door-to-door or even trying them out one at a time over the phone.

I had hoped to turn Jonathan Sacks slowly and deliberately, the way I’d been taught, a gradual closing of a trap he couldn’t escape. But that was too bad. I was on deadline. I just had to reach out and rattle his cage.

After I’d made some calls and broken the ice, I was on a roll. There was a sliver of something else, too. Fun wasn’t the right word; it was more the pleasure of giving in to one of your weaknesses.

I looked over at the property manager’s office and thought for a minute. Then I dialed Sacks’s ex-wife’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hello. I’m sorry to bother you. This is Stephen at River Park Homes. You’re listed as Jonathan Sacks’s emergency contact.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh yes. We had a pretty major leak over here, and we only have his office number. We need to access his unit and were trying to get in touch with him.”

“You tried his cell? Do you have the new number?”

“We only have his home and office.”

“He just changed it,” she said, and read out his number.

Now I could get in touch with him, but what would I say? I had a vague sense of my pitch in my mind, trying to be on his side, to be the good guy to Lynch’s bad, but I didn’t know what the ask was, what the terms were.

Jack had given me some background on Sacks the night before, along with Lynch’s number. I took a walk up and down the block and called it.

“Who’s this?” Lynch said.

“Mike Ford,” but I didn’t get much further than that. A Prius rounded the corner, and I recognized a man who looked like Jonathan Sacks if he’d just finished a three-day bender.

“Shit. He’s here,” I said. “I’ll call you back.” I ducked behind my Jeep.

From what I could see, Sacks’s car was a mess. A rubber plant in the back seat wobbled back and forth as he stopped in front of the complex and marched toward his town house in a dark blue sweater, khakis, and running shoes.

He entered his house for a quick inspection, then walked over to the property manager’s office. I could see him through the window as he gestured back toward his unit. His ex-wife must have called him about the leak. This was moving far faster than I’d planned.

I watched as his confusion gave way to suspicion and he peered out the windows of the office.

He emerged, started up the Prius, and took off. I jumped in my car and followed, hoping to at least find out where he was staying so I could contrive a way to talk to him.

I kept my distance, but it hardly mattered. Sacks was in his own world. In his mirrors, I could see him talking to himself at the stoplights. From Southwest he drove along the Mall, then crossed to the Navy Memorial and parked with half his car in a bus zone.

He walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, then turned toward Indiana. The cold realization hit me. He was heading toward Judiciary Square, my least favorite place in DC.

The whole area is a palace of nightmares for the criminally inclined. On my left the FBI building hung over the street, a brutalist concrete fortress. On my right stood the Department of Justice, where I’d had the pleasure of nearly being incinerated a while back. Ahead were the main headquarters of the Metropolitan Police and the Superior and District Courts for the District of Columbia. I did a lot of pro bono work there, so you’d think I’d have gotten used to the place, but they never failed to unnerve me.

The Superior Court was where, when I was twelve, I’d spent weeks sitting on hard plastic chairs, waiting outside as my father navigated a labyrinth of pretrial meetings with DAs and prosecutors, all false smiles as they rushed past me and my brother. It was where I’d had to sit, wearing my church clothes, and watch as a jury foreman announced that my father was guilty, where I’d listened to the judge give him twenty-four years, where I’d watched the bailiff pull him out of my mother’s arms. For most of my life he’d been gone.

And it was where Sacks was headed. A perfect spot to do my first work for my new criminal confederates.

Cops filled the sidewalks and wide steps in front of the courthouses. I counted four uniformed marshals as I walked, and who knows how many plainclothes.

Sacks stopped in front of an ugly 1970s-era building of water-stained concrete and black glass. He stood out front and stared at the entrance, one hand deep in his pocket, the other compulsively picking at something on his neck. I was twenty feet away.

My phone rang.

Sacks turned as I silenced it and pretended I’d been casually walking by.

It was Annie’s number. I checked the time. Damn it. If I didn’t wrap this up soon, I was going to be late.

Sacks was still staring at the building. He looked as if he might start crying. Finally, he took a deep breath and walked back the way he’d come. He passed a sports bar, considered it for a moment, then ducked into the gloom. I found a spot on the sidewalk where I could see him through the door.

My phone rang again. I looked down, half wincing, expecting Annie. It was Jack.

“What’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“Judiciary Square. I found Sacks.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Moping around like it’s the last day of summer vacation.”

“What do you think he’s after?”

“I don’t—” I looked back toward the building he’d approached, then backed away from. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t figured it out before. It was Judiciary Center, home to the top prosecutor in the District. “US Attorney.”

“Oh shit,” Jack said.

“Lynch said he’d leave him alone unless he did something rash.”

“Snitching seems pretty rash, given what we know about Lynch. You can’t let him go in. They’ll kill him. I just wrapped a meeting. I’m not far. I’ll head over.”

I told myself that I was doing a good deed in all this. Lynch might be watching me and Sacks right now. If he saw his inside man walk into the US Attorney’s office, Lynch was liable to do anything. There was another reason I had to stop him: if Sacks talked, my only easy way out of this—luring him back into crime—would disappear.

Sacks didn’t order anything at the bar. After five minutes, he gave up. He stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the fountains at the Navy Memorial. He looked up Indiana toward the courts, then back to his car.

Just go,
I willed him.

He picked up his cell phone. I moved closer.

It was a short call, but I was able to catch the end: “I’m coming in. I’m right across the square. Okay.”

He started walking toward the courthouse, with a head start on me.

My phone buzzed again. A text from Annie. “Where are you?”

I didn’t have time to reply. As I followed Sacks back across the square, I could have sworn I saw a black Chrysler cruise down Fourth Street.

I didn’t have time to try to turn Sacks inch by inch. I had to wrangle him in on the fly, in the heart of the criminal justice system.

I walked fast after him as he neared the intersection. He caught a break in the traffic. I had to pause and finally just go for it. I played chicken with a US Marshal’s Escalade that braked and blared its horn as I ran across the street.

I watched as Sacks reached the front door of the courthouse. I ran after him, but I was too late. Sacks was already going through the metal detectors, and I was at the back of the queue. Eight police officers stood between us, and it didn’t seem like a good place to shout an invitation to a criminal conspiracy.

I waited, sweating, as they cleared me through security. I scooped up my cell phone and keys, and ran down the hallway after Sacks.

He heard me coming, turned, and faced me with a startled look.

Two more uniformed marshals passed us.

“Jonathan Sacks?” I said.

My cheeks were red from running. A bruise lingered near my right eye. I knew I looked crazy.

“Yes,” he said, inching away as he glanced toward the nearest cops.

“My name is Michael Ford. I’m an attorney. And I have reason to believe your life is in danger. I’m sorry to surprise you like this.”

“Who do you work for?”

“No one. I’ve learned some information recently. I had to warn you.”

He started backing away.

“Listen. If you cooperate with a prosecutor or give information right now, you’re putting yourself at risk. If I can find out what you’re doing, so can they. Please, give me five minutes of your time.”

“This is some kind of threat?” he said.

“The opposite. I’m here to help.”

“Go on,” he said.

“Not here,” I said. “I can’t tell you how dangerous it is for you, and for me, to be in this building. They have informants. If you talk, they’ll know.”

“And how do you know all this?”

I stepped closer. “My brother tried talking. They found out. I watched the men behind this beat him until he was unconscious. His life is in danger, too. So please, hear me out.”

His eyes were fixed on the nearest marshals. One shout and I was done.

Families stood near the courtroom doors, wearing looks of shock or quiet distress. Dozens of prosecutors, judges, and police strode by. I saw the hard plastic chairs where I’d spent so much time, saw a grandmother waiting, a kid swinging legs too short to touch the ground. Through an open door, I saw a judge taking her seat. In that moment I relived my own arrest and trial ten years before, remembered the judge staring down, the night my whole life fell apart.

With every step, I expected to feel the hand on my shoulder, the steel on my wrists.

“YOU HAVE FIVE
minutes,” Sacks said.

I couldn’t believe he’d gone for it. “Follow me,” I said. “A public place. Just not here.”

He nodded.

Before he could think twice, I led him out of the courthouse and across Constitution to a stand of trees at the very end of the National Mall. We were across from the fountains in front of the Capitol.

“Talk,” he said.

I had to seduce this man into a conspiracy that I knew almost nothing about. I had to get inside his head, to know his motivations in order to bring him around. My brother had given me what he had learned, the rough outlines. Sacks was a typical DC workaholic, so single-mindedly focused on saving the world that he’d lost his wife. I read a lot of his speeches and white papers, all very dry and technical, but they were what passed for muckraking in his circle: arguments for raising bank capitalization requirements, reining in derivatives and prop trading.

Jack filled in the rest. After the divorce, when Sacks actually needed money—alimony, child support—none of the banks would hire him. He’d burned his bridges trying to do the right thing. The revolving door was jammed. He played the part of humble bureaucrat, but he couldn’t stand having a roommate, a basement apartment. He thought handling billions in T-bills meant he could handle his own money in the markets. He couldn’t. And from there it was an easy fall into being checkmated by Lynch.

What deluded me into thinking I could turn him? The guy comes to DC to try to live a decent life and do some good among seemingly respectable people, then gets lured into a crime he can barely understand, and is presently scared shitless.

I could relate.

“These men you’re running from,” I said. “They have sources everywhere.” I had heard as much from my brother, and it was in my interest to believe it now. “If you talk, they will find out, and they will get to you.”

“The prosecutors can protect me.”

“For a financial crimes case? You think they have the resources for that? This isn’t the Five Families. You regulate the banks. You know how these white-collar deals go. Six years from now, whoever’s behind all this
may
face a fine that amounts to a few percent of the interest they’ve made off the profits. They sign a deferred prosecution agreement, and it all goes under the rug. Are you going to hide out that whole time?”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’m just a boring grind, like you. My brother is another story. He was involved, facilitating. He came to me for help. He tried to go to the police. The men he was working for found out. And now they’re going to kill him, unless…”

“Unless I go along with it.”

I nodded. “Have they threatened you, too?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just gazed at the Lincoln Memorial in the distance.

“You came to Washington to do good,” I said. “I understand. It’s what brought me here. And you work every waking hour trying to stop the everyday graft. And what do you get?”

He looked down at the bare dirt of the Mall.

“They grind you down,” I went on. “You try doing the right thing, and you end up losing everything you’ve worked for.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I’ve got my own story. That doesn’t matter right now. I know about paying the price for your principles. I know about being cornered. If all these hedge funds are trading on expert networks and inside info, what’s one more tip? What’s the difference? Why should you be the only one to suffer when everyone is rigging the game? You just send them the information. Two seconds and this all goes away. There will be no long, ugly interrogations, no grand juries, no rows of cameras, no black mark on your résumé, with everyone you meet for the rest of your life knowing what they drove you to.”

I scared myself with how easily these dark promises slipped out. I wasn’t only trying to convince Sacks to sell his soul. I was trying to convince myself.

“Like you care what happens to me,” he said.

“I do. My brother’s brought me nothing but trouble my whole life. But you’re a decent guy. What happened to you is terrible. Just pass them the information. It will be untraceable. And then you get your life back. None of this ever happened.”

He took a deep breath and looked toward the reflecting pool as it rippled under a cold wind. I was more interested in what he was doing with his hand in his right pocket. If I hadn’t just watched him clear the metal detectors at the courthouse, I might have been worried about a gun.

“Okay,” he said. “Where do we go from here?”

I had given a decent speech, perhaps too familiar too early. Maybe I was just that good, and I really had turned Sacks. But flattering myself was dangerous, especially when talking to a man who a few moments ago was doing his damnedest to cooperate with the US Attorney. I never really thought I’d be asking someone, “Are you wearing a wire?” but then again, it was a day for firsts.

I didn’t know what the next steps were. He saw my hesitation, seized on it.

“You’re in the dark on this,” he said. “Do you even know the target? The stakes they’re playing for?”

He laughed, like I was the biggest sap in the world. My father’s advice came back to me: Never bet in another man’s game. I turned slightly and saw, parked two hundred feet away, Lynch’s Chrysler. A gray cylinder was sticking out of the rear window.

My instincts told me to drop to the ground or run like hell, but I realized that the object wasn’t a gun. It was some kind of microphone. Lynch could hear every word.

Sacks followed my gaze, and as he turned, I stepped forward and looked down into his jacket pocket, held open by his hand inside it. The top of a digital recorder stood out from his fist. A red light glowed. He’d been taping me. He was going to give me up to the prosecutors.

“They’re after the directive,” he said.