Washington, of draining the swamp of as much cash as he could stuff into his pockets. It had been a terrific run; flee now, enjoy the good life, go on an epic spending spree, escape before it killed him.
A year rolling through the coastal enclaves of enormous wealth followed. Then six months bouncing around the Caribbean on his mammoth yacht-a full year and a half of lovely tranquillity, eighteen months removed from the mad hustle-bustle of D.C.-before he decided he had made a horrible mistake. He became bored and miserable. Always a pathetic golfer, if anything, he became more terrible.
And hanging around with a bunch of rich has-beens only reminded him of his own sorry diminished status. The perks, the sense of self-importance, and the action were calling him back. Plus, with all that time together, his rather young third wife suddenly discovered what her predecessors had learned: she loathed him. She took to sleeping in another bedroom, which was fine by him because the sex had turned dull and he was tired of her snoring anyway.
Also he learned about the yardman, Juan, a handsome young Latin hunk who trimmed a little more than the hedges.
Bellweather promptly sold the yacht, fired the gardener, dumped the wife, and had himself installed as managing director, a vague title that required very little work, yet gave him carte blanche to nose into any nook or cranny that interested him. The position of institutional magpie suited his tastes immensely, the exquisite privilege of looking over his successor’s shoulder and second-guessing him at every turn.
“Think it’s real?” Walters asked, sounding deeply depressed.
“Maybe. Who knows?”
“Good question. Who knows?”
“Well, Wiley-I guess he knows.”
“Yeah, and he didn’t sound like a guy who’s shooting blanks.”
“The Holy Grail project,” Bellweather repeated, letting the sound roll off his tongue. “If Wiley’s even half on the mark, that’s exactly what this polymer is. Do you know how much the military would pay for this miracle coating?”
Walters rolled forward in his chair and pinched his eyebrows together. He had a pretty good idea, and that depressed him all the more. “Who’s this company he’s talking about?”
“Could be anybody, really. He was very cagey.”
They had both listened to the tape, three times, replaying certain key sections until they thought they’d be sick; Wiley had never once slipped. Not once, not a clue, not a breadcrumb. Walters quickly summed up the little they knew: “The CEO of this mysterious company is a chemical engineer. Two years ago, his firm pushed sales of about four hundred million. It’s a penny stock.” He rubbed his shiny forehead in frustration and said, “Any of ten thousand companies fit that bill, Dan. Could be Hostess Twinkies, for all we know.”
“Who do you think he’s meeting with now?” Bellweather asked after a long moment of staring at the walls.
“No idea. But they probably look a lot like us. He mentioned New York and Pennsylvania. Could be corporate, say, GE or United Technologies. I hope it’s not another big takeover outfit.”
The names of a dozen fierce competitors rattled through their brains and for a long ugly moment they shared the same depressing thought. In the small, intensely competitive world of big-league equity firms, word would spread like a flash fire that CG had let the biggest catch of the year slip out of its grasp. Worse, CG, for a variety of reasons, specialized in defense work. It dabbled in countless other areas, diversifying to protect itself against the eventuality of an outbreak of world peace, unwelcome and unlikely as that might be. War, however, was its mainstay. Gouging a large chunk of defense pork remained its bread and butter.
Oh yes, the story of how CG clumsily let Wiley and the most remarkable defense product of the decade walk out the door would roar around town.
It would be more than Walters could bear. He could almost hear the snickers from his buddies at the Congressional Club. Could almost picture the insufferable smirks. “Yo, Mitch, what does fifteen billion slamming the door sound like?”-he could make up the sorry insults himself. Maybe he’d give up golf for a month or two.
Actually, a decade or two might be more like it, he sadly admitted to himself.
“We need to find our boy Jack,” Bellweather announced very firmly, an idea that got a quick nod from Walters. “Tonight. Before he has time to settle on somebody else.”
“He’s going to make us eat dirt,” Walters prophesied with a mournful scowl.
“We deserve it. Let him rub it in till he gets tired of it. Who do you want to handle it?”
“Keep it low-key, for now. He’s got us on the ropes and he knows it. But we can’t afford to cede leverage.” Walters folded his arms, recovered his composure, and calmly said, “Bill Feist. He has a real gift for this sort of thing.”
“Yep, a born ass-kisser. Send him up on the jet. Not the small one, the big one. Tell him to forget the normal wine-and-dine, and forget the half-measured approach. Think fifteen billion dollars.”
“Bill’s good at that, as you know.”
“This time, it’s worth every penny.” Bellweather pushed off from the wall and over his shoulder said, “And find out whatever we can about this Jack Wiley.”
Locating Jack turned out to be loaded with more complications than anybody expected. This task was handled by a private security firm located in Crystal City, a midsize, discreet outfit loaded with washed-up former Feds and spooks who often did work for CG.
TFAC, it was called, a cluster of initials that stood for absolutely nothing but seemed to have a nice ring to it. TFAC was among a growing number of private outfits in D.C., fueled by the explosion of clandestine services and operations after 9/11 that slid easily in the shadows between government and private-sector work. The Capitol Group was their second largest client, right behind Uncle Sam. The U.S. government could wait; the snoops dropped everything and promised instant results.
Locating Jack was kid’s play, or so they thought initially. They focused first on New York City, especially Manhattan, the normal habitat of single young millionaires. Just to be on the safe side, they also weeded through the other boroughs as well. Eleven Jack Wileys turned up. After two hours of running down the prospects, ten of the eleven fell out: six married; two tucked away in retirement homes; one ensconced in jail; one in the hospital coughing out his lungs and dying of AIDS, of all things.
Jack Wiley number eleven lived in Queens.
Queens!-no way could this be the right Jack. No self-respecting young bachelor millionaire would be caught dead living there, and he was quickly dropped before anybody wasted further time on tracking him down.
More troops were thrown into the breach and the search widened to northern Jersey, Long Island, and Westchester County, the usual burbs for well-to-do New Yorkers.
Dead ends piled on top of more dead ends. Then, voila: a likely prospect popped up with his phone number listed, along with his address.
It looked right and it smelled right. The area code hinted at big money. They needed to be sure, though.
A female researcher claiming to be the dispatcher for a national delivery service called Jack’s assistant at the main Cauldron office, two blocks off Wall Street. “It’s a package marked urgent we’ve tried twice, unsuccessfully, to deliver,” she explained, sounding very distressed-the white foam container probably had some of those mail- order steaks that cost a fortune and turn rotten and stinky in the blink of an eye. “The address must be off,” she complained, loudly playing up her frustration. “Just thank the Lord Mr. Wiley had thought to include his work number with his order.”
The TFAC researcher rattled off the address, deliberately mixing up two numbers; the assistant promptly and sharply corrected the mistake.
It was him!
The address was punched into a computer, then, via the wonders of Google and its satellite service, they found themselves ogling a top-down satellite shot of the neighborhood. A technician adroitly expanded, shifted, and manipulated the picture until they were staring at a grainy, blown-up image of the roof of one Jack Wiley.
Jack, it turned out, lived in a large, roomy brick two-story in the town of Rumson, a leafy, very well-to-do northern Jersey suburb, one block from the Navesink River, and a ferry shot from the Big Apple.
One of the former Fibbies knew the police chief of a nearby borough. A friendly phone call and a nosy local cop was immediately dispatched for a quick look-see. He snapped pictures of the front, then left his cruiser and snuck around to get wide-angle shots of the sides and rear.
