Commander-in-Chief

43

Terry Walker looked up from his computer and checked the clock on his wall. It was almost seven p.m., which meant he had only a few minutes before the Robinson landed at the helipad to fly him back home for the evening.

He rubbed soreness from his eyes and started to close down his computers for the night, but his mobile phone rang. Looking down, he saw that it was Kate’s number. “Hello, darling. I’m on schedule. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

To his surprise, a man replied. He immediately recognized the Russian accent of Mr. Popov. “We are very sorry to have to take these measures, Mr. Walker, but you forced our hand.”

“What?” He looked down at his phone, double-checking to make sure it was, in fact, Kate’s line calling. “Where… where is my wife?”

“She is perfectly safe. I promise you that. She will remain so, as long as you comply with our requests.”

Terry Walker was overcome with a feeling of disbelief. That some joke, some trick, was being played on him. He even coughed out a little laugh. “You’ve got me, Popov. Bloody good joke, mate. I don’t know how or why—”

He heard a shuffling on the line, then a new voice. Soft, distant, unsure.

“Dad?”

Walker’s blood ran cold. “Noah?”

“They say you have to do a job for them, it will only take you a couple of weeks. You’ll do it, right? Mom and I need you to do it. They wanted me to tell you that.”

Tears poured down Walker’s face and his voice cracked. “Where’s your mother, Noah? What have they done?”

“Her mouth is all covered with tape. Dad, I think they are pirates. Tell me you’ll do what they want you to.”

“Yes, of course. Don’t worry, buddy.”

There was a knock at the door to Walker’s office. He leapt to his feet, unsure.

Popov said, “You can answer the door.” He hung up the phone.

Walker ran to the door, thinking Kate would be on the other side. He flung it open, only to find the man called Ivanov standing there. Two big, tough-looking men stood behind him, their hands held behind their backs.

The Russian called Ivanov said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. But I need to come in and talk.”

A few minutes later Ivanov and Walker sat in the office, staring at each other across Terry Walker’s desk. The Australian’s eyes were rimmed red, and he’d made no attempt to wipe his tears off his cheeks.

The two big men remained in the lobby. They hadn’t said a word.

Ivanov said, “So, Mr. Walker, it is very simple. We know your security setup. You have retinal scanners and fingerprint scanners here that you have to use to log in. You can only make trades and purchases from your office computer so that no one can steal your credentials and operate under your identity. For this reason we cannot take you somewhere else to do this, we must remain here. This makes things difficult, but we have a plan. You and I will live at a private residence here on Tortola. We will simply go to work every day, but you will not work with any other clients. Only our account. You will purchase two hundred sixty-six million dollars a day in Bitcoin in automatic small increments, then you will sell it for dollars in other small automatic increments through your tumbler system. The dollars will be deposited in accounts that I have already established throughout the world. I will enter the information at the end of each transaction to disburse the money.”

Walker said nothing.

Ivanov added, “Obviously, the more quickly we conduct this operation, the better it will be for everyone. I am hoping the addition of the money into the marketplace will bring up the market, and we can increase our trading volume.” He smiled. “And shorten the amount of time you are inconvenienced by all this.”

Still, Walker did not reply.

“You will also let the staff at Tarpon Island Resort know that your wife and son have been called away to tend to a family illness. They will be well taken care of, but we will hold them until you fulfill your end of the bargain.”

Slowly Walker rubbed the wetness from his face, and he sat up. “I won’t be staying with my family?”

“No. They will be held somewhere else.”

“I will work with you. I will do whatever you want. But I want my family to remain here in the area. I don’t want you shipping them off to Siberia.”

“Certainly. No one is going to Siberia.”

“Return them to Tarpon Island.”

“Out of the question.”

Walker held firm. “Look. You need my compliance. You made that obvious by the steps you have taken. You will get what you need, but you have to give me something in return.”

“I’ll give you your family back. Not enough for you?”

“No, it’s not. I want to see them while I work. You deliver me to them, every single night. I don’t care what you have to do to do it, I don’t care what I have to do.”

Ivanov said, “My colleague, Mr. Popov, said you would ask for this. Here is what we are prepared to do. I will give you a walkie-talkie. Its range is fifteen miles. You can communicate with your family once a day. If they can transmit to you, then you know they are in the area.”

Ivanov pulled the device out of his coat and turned it on. He held it out and Walker took it.

Immediately, he pressed the talk button. “Kate? Kate, are you there?”

His wife’s voice came through the speaker after a few seconds. She sounded impossibly far away, but Terry wondered if what he was hearing was just her fear. “I’m here, Terry.”

“How are you? Have they laid a finger on you?”

He could tell she had been crying. “We are okay. They taped my mouth for a bit, but I’m fine.”

Terry started crying himself again. “Good. It’s going to be just fine. These men just need me for a couple of weeks.”

“They told me. Please do what they say.”

“I promise I will. Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you. They told me not to.”

“Are you sure you are all right?”

“I’m… I’m feeling better than I was, actually. No more of that damn nausea, which is a surprise, considering.”

Suddenly Walker knew his wife was trying to tell him something. He wasn’t sure what it was. He thought a moment, but then Ivanov motioned for him to wrap up the conversation.

“I have to go, darling, but we’ll talk tomorrow. They told me I could talk to you every night.”

To this she just said, “Okay.”

“I love you, Kate. I’m sorry, but this will be over soon.”

Instead of his wife, Popov came over the radio now. “You start work in the morning.”

Terry Walker looked up to Ivanov. The Russian looked upset by having to listen to the conversation between Walker and his kidnapped wife. His face was pale, his eyes narrow, almost as if he was taking it all in for the first time.

Walker said, “I’ll fulfill my end of the deal, mate. You just see that you fulfill yours.”

Ivanov’s eyes cleared and he nodded forcefully. “Mr. Walker. I want you to understand that, despite this uncomfortable arrangement we have established, we are still paying you, and paying you an incredible amount of money. When this is all over, when you are reunited with your family, I hope you will take that money and remain quiet about all this. What I know about your operation could ruin you. What you know about us, on the other hand, could realistically only get you killed. You go to the police, and men like Mr. Popov will find you long before the police find us.”

Walker decided to make one last play to end the kidnapping. “I understand, and I agree totally to your terms. So just let my family out of this.”

Ivanov’s obvious insecurity about the arrangement disappeared in an instant. Walker saw this man was not going to call the whole thing off. Ivanov said, “Mr. Walker, you are a businessman, after a fashion. You understand the fundamentals of indemnification. Your family, sadly, is insurance for us. Nothing more.”

Walker saw there was no reason to protest. He told himself he would do everything they wanted him to do. What alternative did he have?

Walker and Ivanov left the office together a moment later, the two big men following them down to a waiting car.

Terry Walker was taken to a luxury villa on the top of Saint Bernard’s Hill, far on the west side of Tortola Island. He was marched along with three guards through a tiled entryway, past a formal dining room with views out to the sea, and down a hallway to the first-floor master bedroom. Along the way he saw no fewer than six men, all dressed casually. Some were white, some were black, others appeared Hispanic. He was certain few of them, if any of them at all, were Russian other than Popov and Ivanov. He had no idea who they were, but he knew without reservation they were armed, and they wouldn’t hesitate to do the bidding of their Russian masters.

Walker was frisked thoroughly by a guard, then locked in the master bedroom. He walked around the space and saw all the windows were secured and he heard the rhythmic footsteps of a sentry on the colonnade that wrapped around the outside of his room. He had no doubt another guard was posted outside his door.

Walker lay down on the bed, facing the rotating ceiling fan above.

He thought about his conversation with Kate. What had she said? Something about her stomach feeling better, and that this surprised her, considering the situation. She hadn’t said a thing about her stomach since they’d rented a sailboat a few months back. The plan had been for Terry to take a few days off from his work to sail up to Anegada Island, but the trip turned into a disaster. Kate had been so violently ill that they’d had to return the boat after just one day.

Why would it surprise her she was not feeling the same effects now? Clearly, Terry deduced, because she was not on land.

And what had Noah said? Something about pirates?

Yes, Terry realized. His wife and child were clearly being held under guard on a boat.

He rolled over and put his face in his pillow, curled up into the fetal position. It didn’t matter where they were, Terry told himself, because no one was going to come and help them. The only way he could save his family was by making Ivanov and Popov satisfied that he had fulfilled his end of the bargain.

Andrei Limonov stepped out on the patio off the living room with a bottle of vodka and a glass. He sat next to the infinity pool, looking down the side of the hill, to the lights of West End Bay below. The water in the bay on the far side of the lights was blacker than the sky above.

He drank two shots of warm vodka in close succession to calm his nerves. He’d just poured his third glass when he saw the headlights of a big SUV approach up the long and winding driveway. The lights disappeared on the other side of the house, and soon Vlad Kozlov joined him by the pool, sitting in a chair on the other side of the little table. The gray-haired Russian poured himself a shot from a glass he’d brought with him from the bar. He drank it down quickly before turning to Limonov. “How did it go with Walker?”

Limonov said, “He is here. He will comply. We won’t need to use him for very long. I think all the transfers will be complete within three weeks at most. We can then release the family and let them get on with their lives.”

Kozlov said, “I understand.”

Limonov added, “This man knows what he’s dealing with here. If he speaks about this with anyone, even years down the road, he understands you’ll kill him.”

Kozlov did not reply to this.

Limonov decided he would say no more. Instead, he poured another shot of vodka. While he drank it he wondered if, despite any arrangements already made or understood by all the parties, the Australian locked in the master bedroom of this villa was nothing more than a dead man.