Project Moses - A Mystery Thriller (Enzo Lee Mystery-Thriller Series) (25 page)

They had been driving for some time. Lee guessed about 20 minutes. Through the haze in Lee’s mind, he had reached a few conclusions. First, the only thing of possible value he could give his captors was the location of Sarah and Arthur Sendaki. Remembering that might give him a little time. Nothing else really mattered. There was no reason not to answer all the other questions. When it came to Sarah and Sendaki, he would resist first, then give them the wrong location. Maybe they would let him live while they checked it out. That would give him more time to escape.

The second thing that Lee had decided was to try to escape at any cost. His captors had to be tied in with whomever had killed Orson Adams, Brent Donsen and the rest. He doubted that they would suddenly turn squeamish.

The car pulled to a stop. They helped him out of the car and marched him up some stairs and into what he guessed was a house. The floor felt like hardwood and from the sound of his footsteps he judged the room they entered first was a small one. They put him into another room, setting him down on a bed.

“We’ll be checking on you so don’t try anything,” said the one who had driven the car. He heard the door close.

Lee pushed himself to a sitting position and then slid down so that he sat on the floor with his back against the bed. The rope around his wrists was so tight it was cutting off the circulation. He struggled with it, but it just bit deeper into his skin. It didn’t feel like he was going to get the rope off without something to cut it. He could still run for it, even with his hands tied, if he could just get the blindfold off and figure out a way to get a head start.

He heard footsteps approaching. The door to his room opened, then was shut. He heard the footsteps leaving. He wasn’t going to have a chance to do anything if they were going to look in on him every three minutes.

Off somewhere else in the house, they were having an animated conversation. He couldn’t make it out through the walls, but it sounded like they were arguing. It didn’t make sense to him. What would they be arguing about? Surely they would call whomever was in charge and get directions, even if it was just permission to shoot Lee in the back of the head and leave him deep in the Arizona desert.

Lee waited. Every few minutes, he heard the footsteps and the door open and shut again. He thought about trying to get the blindfold off. If he did that, maybe he could open the door and run for the entrance of the house. But, he had no idea what lay outside, whether he would have any place to run or hide. He decided that after the next check on him, he would try to get the blindfold off, maybe by rubbing his face on the bed. He should have a couple of minutes to figure out some plan to get away.

But, then the conversation stopped. The argument had ended. He guessed a decision had been made. He heard the footsteps, still only one set, approach the room. The door opened. Someone put his hand under his arm and pulled him up.

“C’mon,” he said. It was the driver. He walked Lee out of the house and back down the stairs. He had Lee in front of him, guiding him with one hand on the back of Lee’s upper arm. They walked a hundred yards or so. Then the driver pulled Lee to a halt.

Lee stood for what seemed like forever. He sensed the driver behind him, waiting. Lee expected to feel the muzzle of a gun against the back of his head, or hear the click of a hammer being cocked. This was taking forever. If they were just going to kill him, get it over with. Lee was starting to shake. He was out of breath and could hear his teeth clattering. He was going to lose control of his bladder at any moment. He didn’t want to go like this, pissing in his pants and terrified out of his mind.

Finally, he felt the blindfold being untied. It dropped away. Lee blinked his eyes to clear them. It occurred to him that his glasses were gone. He wondered what had happened to them. At first he saw only the darkness. Then, he could make out in the distance some headlights. There was a road perhaps a half mile away with a set of headlights on it, then another. There were plants in front of him, low to the ground. And something else, something making the starlight reflect toward him. It was water. Not exactly a pool of water, more like a marsh, with plants growing in it. It occurred to him that it didn’t make sense, a marsh in the middle of the desert.

“This is why you’re here, isn’t it?” said the driver.

What was he talking about? Lee fought to think clearly. The right answer was crucial, a matter of his life or death. Should he admit he didn’t have a clue what the driver was getting at? Would ignorance save him? What the hell
was
he talking about?

“Yes,” Lee finally said.

“You already know about this, the rice, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. The rice.” Then it dawned on him. Rice paddies. It wasn’t a marsh but rice being grown. But it still didn’t make sense. This was the desert.

Then the driver grabbed the rope around his wrists. Lee felt a knife being inserted. It cut through the rope like it was string. Then he turned Lee around so they were facing. In the moonlight, he could see that the driver looked like he was in his late-20s. The young man assessed Lee warily while he continued to grip the knife. It was a long Bowie knife with a shiny blade and nasty looking point.

“Mister Lee, we have a lot to talk about,” the driver finally said. He turned and headed back toward the house, leaving Lee to follow him.

Chapter 31

SAM SCHWARTZ WAS a short man, not quite rotund, with a closely cropped beard that circled his round face. He wore glasses and his eyes looked sleepy. He welcomed Sarah politely into his townhouse and was effusive at seeing Arthur Sendaki in the flesh.

“Hello, Arthur,” said Schwartz. He had a loud, vigorous voice and spoke quickly. “I didn’t believe any of the B.S. that I’ve been seeing on the tube about you.”

“Hello, Sam. Why, thank you. I think I have been rather unfairly maligned in the past couple of days.”

Schwartz offered them drinks. Sendaki accepted a Scotch, Sarah had a 7-up and Schwartz was working on a glass of red wine.

“Mister Schwartz…” began Sarah.

“Please, call me Sam.”

“All right. Sam. As you probably gather, Arthur and I are not on the best of terms with AgriGenics at the moment.”

Schwartz laughed.

“Join the club,” he said.

“Without going into lots of detail that you may not even want to know about, we believe the company is after us because it thinks we know something about a secret research project.

“Sam, I don’t know how much you knew about the government work we were doing,” added Sendaki. “It was very hush-hush. We weren’t allowed to report it as it normally should have been reported.”

“Oh, I knew something was going on,” said Schwartz. “You can’t just dump $12 million into a research miscellaneous account every quarter and let it go. And then there were the payments from all those small companies. The invoices just said ‘For Research’.”

“Yes. I guess I wasn’t very creative in devising the paperwork,” said Sendaki.

“And Brian isn’t any better.”

“How has Brian Graylock accounted for it?” said Sarah.

“Pretty much the same way, now that they’ve started again,” said Schwartz. “After Arthur left, the payments stopped. Then, they started again two years ago in a big way. I mean almost double. Last year, the amount that came in without explanation was more than $80 million. And the payments are irregular now and come in through overseas banks from places like Bermuda and Grand Cayman.”

“The payments aren’t explained at all?” asked Sarah. “The company must account for them somehow.”

“Sure. Well, they’re tied to invoices but the invoices are very general. For example, an invoice might only say ‘research’ or ‘miscellaneous goods.’ And, they’re coded so instead of the name of a customer, all you see is a number. The number doesn’t mean anything to you unless you’re Brian Graylock.”

“Is there any way to quantify the suspicious payments and to determine the exact dates?” said Sarah.

“Sure. It should all be there in the banking records. The company has an electronic link to the bank so that whatever appears on the bank’s records also shows up on the screen at the company, too.”

“Boy, I’d love to get a look at that,” said Sarah.

“If you have a half hour, I’ll show it to you.”

“Sam,” said Sendaki. “I thought…I mean you told me that Brian had …”

“Given me the ax?” said Schwartz. “He hasn’t pulled the trigger yet but I’m sure he means to. He’s brought in my replacement and I’m training her already. For now, he still needs me to generate the last quarter and year-end financials. Once those are in, I don’t expect to be around much longer. But, for now Brian still needs me. So, I have access to all the financial records.”

Sarah talked Sendaki into staying at Sam Schwartz’ home. The chance was simply too great that someone would recognize him as the missing, mentally ill company founder and call the police or, worse, AgriGenics’ security force.

A 15-minute drive brought them to the sweeping drive that led to the AgriGenics’ new headquarters that Sarah recognized from the description Lee had given her earlier.

Sam Schwartz and Sarah went in through a rear entrance. He had to wave a white plastic card in front of an electronic sensor to gain entry. Then, the elevator required Schwartz to input a five-digit code before it took them to his office on the third floor. They could hear some commotion off in one of the conference rooms. They carefully avoided being seen by anyone there. When they got to Schwartz’ office, they shut the door.

“All right,” said Schwartz. He was starting to sweat and he rocked back and forth in his desk chair nervously. “Here we go.”

Sarah stood behind him, watching over Schwartz’ shoulder as the comptroller manipulated the keyboard of his computer. She saw column after column of numbers appear and then disappear. Finally, Schwartz stopped on one screen and just stared at it.

“Whew,” he said, shaking his head. “This is truly amazing.”

“What? What?” Sarah leaned closer to the screen to see what was fascinating Schwartz. He pointed toward the middle of a column of numbers.

“See that. It looks like $30 million each from three different banks. One in Switzerland. Two in Grand Cayman. That was when? More than a week ago. I’ve never seen amounts of this size. What did we sell them, a hydrogen bomb?”

Schwartz turned back to the computer, made the screen disappear, and began fiddling with the keys again. More columns came and went. Then he stopped again and pointed at the screen.

“See that’s more like it. An $8 million payment from a bank in Bermuda in March of this year. Here’s another for $5 million in April from a bank in the Caymans again.”

Sarah studied the screen for a minute.

“Sam, if these payments corresponded with a shipment of some type, say some drums of chemicals, could we determine that?” she asked.

“We can try. If it can be done at all, we can do it sitting here. One thing Brian Graylock doesn’t skimp on is computer equipment and software. We’ve got the latest in document storage and retrieval software. Every piece of paper that goes through this place is stored electronically. It’s wonderful, just wonderful.”

Schwartz returned to the keyboard and began punching the keys again. Sarah found another chair and rolled it over so she could sit and watch. Sam was shaking his head.

“I tried to pull up any shipping records tied to the same invoices as the payments. But nothing shows.”

“What if they sent it out using a totally different invoice number, or didn’t bother to use any invoice number?” asked Sarah.

“Hmmm. Good idea. Let’s see if we can do it by date alone.” Schwartz fiddled with the keys some more.

“Bingo. Here it is. At least this looks like it. Six 55-gallon drums to Argentina on the same date that $8 million hit. The customer isn’t even coded. It’s listed as Myllar Produce Company. And…yeah…here’s another one. Four drums to Germany when the $5 million arrived. The company on this one is Zimmernacht, Inc. This what you want?”

“I think it’s a good start,” said Sarah. “Is there any way to save all this and put it on paper?”

“Sure. I’ll save it on disk and we can print it out when we’re finished.”

Over the next 20 minutes, they found another eight multimillion dollar payments made to AgriGenics from overseas banks and matched the payments to shipments overseas made on the same date. Almost as an afterthought, Sarah asked Schwartz to check the three $30 million payments.

“That’s strange,” he said. “No overseas shipments appear on that date. Let me check before and after. No. Nothing through today. And…nothing back through two weeks ago. A definite change in the pattern, I’d say.”

“Hmmm. Okay,” said Sarah. “Well, let’s make sure and get a copy of the statement showing the three $30 million payments. They must be important.”

“Okay,” said Schwartz, hitting a series of keys. “You…have…got it. Now, the only problem is that this computer prints out on a laser printer used by several people. It’s out by the secretary’s station in the hallway. You stay here. I’ll make sure the coast is clear.”

Schwartz disappeared for a minute and then returned. His face was etched with worry when he returned.

“I think Graylock is here,” he said. “They’re wrestling about something in the conference room but no one is near the printer. I’ll get it started and we’ll catch the copies as they come out, just to be safe. Then, let’s get the hell out!”

It was a high speed printer so it took less than two minutes for the pages to be printed. They went directly to the elevator, took it down to the ground floor and went out to Schwartz’ car.

In their haste to leave, Sarah and Schwartz failed to notice one particular blinking light on the laser printer. It indicated the machine had run out of paper with pages still stored in the electronic buffer waiting to be printed.

Chapter 32

LEE SANK TO his knees while he watched the driver with the Bowie knife still in his hand walk back to the house. Without the blindfold, he could see that it was a simple bungalow set alone with no other houses in sight. In front of the house was a bare dirt area where a white Oldsmobile was parked.