“What is it he wants?”
“He wishes some assistance to transfer money. And the president’s suite.”
“That is correct,” Schema said. “I would be most grateful for your assistance in this matter.”
Castillo glanced down at the computer screen, then back up at Schema. He said in English, “I am sorry for this great tragedy. Our country is usually more hospitable, but in all big cities there are problems.”
“Of course,” Schema said.
“Please, follow me to my office.”
Schema followed the hotel manager past the concierge desk to a small back office.
“I need to call my banker in Switzerland,” Schema said. “I will, of course, take care of all expenses.”
“Please,” Castillo said. “You may sit at my desk.”
Schema looked down at his wrist before remembering he’d given his watch away. “I forgot that my watch was stolen. What time is it?”
“It is just past nine.”
“Good. It is not closing time in Switzerland yet.”
“I will give you some privacy,” Castillo said, stepping toward the door. “I will be right outside my office if you need me.”
“Thank you,” Schema said. He sat down at the desk and dialed an eleven-digit number. “Please put me through to Florian Wyss. Tell him this is Giacomo Schema.”
A moment later a man answered in stilted English. “Giacomo, I have been trying to reach you. You missed our dinner party. My wife was so disappointed to not meet you.”
Schema ignored the pleasantries. “Florian, I am calling with urgency. There has been a mutiny. Our director, James Hatch, has commandeered the company and the Ampere. He has murdered two board members and imprisoned the rest of us. It was by sheer fortune that we have managed to escape.”
“Mon dieu!” Wyss exclaimed. “Now I understand. There was an order from President Hatch to immediately transfer eight hundred million dollars into an account in the Cayman Islands. Of course I would never make such a transfer without personally speaking with you.”
“When did that order come?”
“Just a few hours ago. I have been trying to reach you.”
“Then Hatch is still alive,” Schema said. “This is most unfortunate. You did the right thing, Florian. I am in Lima, Peru. I need you to make arrangements to wire money to this hotel and move money to this account.”
“Have you contacted the authorities?”
“The authorities of which country, Florian?”
“My apologies, Giacomo. What else do you require?”
“Send a jet for us. We will meet with you in Geneva to discuss our next move.”
“How many will be flying with you?”
“There will be six, including me.”
“Shall I freeze the Elgen accounts?”
Schema thought for a moment. “No. Hatch doesn’t know we’re still alive. Let’s let him keep his false sense of security until I have determined a course of action.”
“Where shall I wire the money?”
“I am at the Lima Hilton. Let me have you speak with the hotel manager.” Schema walked to the door. “Señor Castillo, my banker would like a word with you.”
While Castillo and Wyss worked out financial arrangements, Schema found some paper and made a list of everything he needed, including two changes of clothing. A few minutes later Castillo said, “Mr. Wyss would like to speak with you again.”
“Gracias,” Schema said, taking the phone.
“Everything is taken care of, Giacomo,” Wyss said. “Our bank has opened a line of credit with the hotel, so all your expenses will be covered. In the morning you will be delivered five thousand American dollars from the Banco de la Nación with a new credit card. The jet will take me a few more minutes to reserve, but it will be sent for you at the first moment possible and will reach you, at the latest, by the day after tomorrow. Señor Castillo will arrange transportation to the airport.”
“Thank you, Florian. I look forward to seeing you, and meeting your lovely wife.”
“I will be most pleased. I will see you soon. I look forward to helping you put an end to this mutiny.”
“Indeed,” Schema replied. He hung up the phone and turned to the hotel manager. “Thank you for your assistance. I will need my suite and four other rooms for my board members.” He handed Castillo the list he had made. “Also, I will need these things delivered to my room as soon as possible.”
“As you wish, sir. Is there anything else you will require?”
“Please have your finest wine, cheese, and fruit sent to my room. Also, your best steak with a cheese-and-mushroom omelet.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And one more thing. Give yourself a thousand-dollar tip. You’ve been most helpful.”
* * *
By the time Schema retrieved the other board members and got to his own suite, there was a bottle of Peruvian wine waiting for him, along with a selection of crackers and cheeses, dates, apricots, and honey, as well as a T-bone steak and an omelet.
Schema examined the bottle of wine, poured himself a glass, then took a sip. “It isn’t Château Margaux, but it will do.” He drank the glass, then wolfed down his meal. He hadn’t eaten for nearly twenty-four hours and he felt it.
When he’d finished eating, he took off his clothes and lay back on his bed. Now that the danger and hunger that had filled his mind were gone, his thoughts turned to the man who had caused him such pain. Hatch had taken everything from him—his company, his love, his future. Now that he knew Hatch was still alive, he wanted revenge. He will pay, Schema thought. I will use every last dime, every means available to me, to make him pay for what he has done. I will destroy Hatch if it’s the last thing I do.
The question Schema struggled to answer was: Just how desperate is Hatch? Schema could employ a mercenary army to overthrow Hatch and his Elgen guard, but that could take weeks or months to organize. In the meantime, Hatch had full access to all the Starxource plants. He could destroy every Starxource plant in a matter of hours. Or, worse yet, he could release the rats into the countries they inhabited, causing mass destruction. Schema had no doubt that the attacked countries would destroy everything Elgen, leaving nothing for Schema to recover.
However he proceeded he had to be careful. Underestimating Hatch was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make again.
Bank of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
The flight from Lima to Geneva took a little more than fourteen hours. Wyss had cars waiting for them at the airport and the board was taken to the Metropole Hotel, on the bank of Lake Geneva, while Schema, in a separate car, went directly to the offices of the Bank of Geneva.
“It’s good to be back in Switzerland,” Schema said to the driver as they left the hotel.
“It is always good to be in Switzerland,” the driver replied. “Would you like me to wait for you?”
“Yes,” Schema said. “I should only be an hour or so.”
The car pulled up to the curb in front of the bank, and inside, Schema took the elevator to the seventh floor, to Wyss’s office. Wyss’s secretary, a mature Frenchwoman, greeted him as he entered.
“Bienvenue, Monsieur Schema. Mr. Wyss and his associates are expecting you. Please go on back.”
“Merci,” Schema said as he walked past her desk. He suddenly turned back. “His associates?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
Schema walked past the reception area to Wyss’s office and opened the door. Florian Wyss was sitting at his desk. He looked up when Schema entered. His face was pale and his hand was wrapped in white gauze.
“Florian, what happened to your hand?”
Wyss shook his head. “I am very sorry, Giacomo. I had no choice.”
Schema walked farther into the room. “What are you talking about?”
“He gave me no choice.”
“Who?” Schema said.
“That would be me,” Hatch said. He walked in
to the office flanked by Torstyn and Tara and four Elgen guards. The guards immediately surrounded Schema. “And I believe Mr. Wyss is referring to the sizable transfers we just made.”
Schema turned white. “Call security,” he said to Wyss.
“Giacomo, what kind of welcome is that?” Hatch said calmly. “After traveling halfway across the world I thought you would at least offer me a drink.”
Schema glared at him, red with rage. He would have lunged at him were it not for the guards surrounding him.
“No?” Hatch said. “Then I’ll help myself.” He walked over to the credenza on the far side of the office and poured himself a drink from a crystal decanter. “Ah, the good stuff. No wonder you bank here.” He stepped back toward Schema. “Of course, I would have preferred that you had gone down with the Ampere, but, as it turns out, it is fortuitous that you didn’t. Otherwise I might have had some trouble locating a few of your accounts.”
Schema looked back at Florian. “What have you done?”
“I had no choice, Giacomo. All the money has been transferred.”
Schema leaned in. “Surely not . . . everything.”
Florian grimaced. “Everything.”
“How could they have even known about those accounts?”
Florian glanced over at Tara, who smiled darkly. “They have ways of getting into your head.”
“It’s done, Giacomo,” Hatch said. “Everything is gone. Except you, of course. You’re still here. Now, I could easily remedy that and shoot you right now, but where would the fun be in that? So I propose a challenge. You are a fugitive from nearly every civilized country and now you have no money to run. Oh, and I put a million-dollar bounty on your head. Let’s see just how long you can survive. Florian, call Interpol. Inform them that a known fugitive has entered your bank.”
Wyss blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. “Please, Admiral Hatch . . .”
“Wrong answer,” Hatch said. “Torstyn . . .”
“Yes, sir.”
“Help Mr. Wyss understand how much I dislike being disobeyed. He still has one hand with flesh.”
“Please, no,” Florian said, lifting the phone. “I’ll call right now. I’ll alert Interpol immediately.” He pushed a button on his phone. “Connect me with security.”
Hatch turned to Schema. “It’s pathetic, isn’t it, how quickly loyalties turn? You really can’t trust anyone these days. Now, if I were you, and thankfully I’m not, I would run. And joining the others isn’t in your best interest. I’ve already sent guards to the Metropole to collect them.” Hatch grinned. “Some of the EGGs and I have a bet on how long you can resist capture.” He flourished a hand. “It’s a game of sorts.” He turned to Wyss. “If you please.”
Wyss spoke into the phone. “This is Florian Wyss of Bank of Geneva. I would like to report a known fugitive who has been seen in our bank. Yes. Immediately.” He hung up and looked at Schema. “I am very sorry.”
“You will pay, Hatch,” Schema said.
“Yes, so you’ve said,” Hatch said. “But I’m still waiting for the bill.” His dark gaze turned to amusement. “Now please hurry. If you’re captured today I’ll lose the bet. And you of all people should know”—he leaned forward and his voice dropped—“that I hate to lose.”
An alarm sounded. Schema glanced once more at Florian, then turned and ran out of the building.
Hatch laughed. “That went well.”
Wyss used his bandaged hand to blot the sweat from his forehead. “I’ve done everything you asked. You’ll release my wife and daughter now?”
Hatch looked at him quizzically. “Of course not.”
Florian blanched. “But you said that if I cooperated . . .”
“Yes, I did,” Hatch said. “Allow me to explain. There is a fable about a man who comes to a riverbank and is about to cross when he sees a viper. The viper says to the man, ‘I would also like to cross the river. Would you please carry me across?’ The man replies, ‘No, you’re a viper. You’ll bite me and I’ll die.’ ‘Don’t be foolish,’ the viper says. ‘If I bite you, we’ll both drown.’
“The man, convinced by the snake’s reasoning, puts the viper on his back and swims across the river. As he reaches the opposite bank the viper bites the man and slithers off. As the man lies dying he says, ‘I carried you across. You said you wouldn’t bite me.’ ‘Sorry,’ the viper replied. ‘I’m a viper. It’s in my nature.’ ”
A broad smile crossed Hatch’s face and he leaned forward. “Thanks for the lift, Florian, but I can’t really help myself. It’s in my nature.”
“What will you do with my family?”
“Your wife and daughter will be held as GPs.”
“What are GPs?”
“They’ll find out soon enough. Unfortunately, you won’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re needed in Taiwan.” Hatch said to Torstyn, “We’ll be in the car. Finish him.” Hatch walked out of the office followed by Tara and his guards.
Wyss just stared at Torstyn in horror. “Please . . .”
Torstyn reached out his hand. “It won’t hurt . . . for long.”
Timepiece Ranch
After my practice session with Gervaso I knocked on my mother’s door. She answered, smiling as soon as she saw me. “I was just thinking about you.”
“I need to ask you something,” I said.
“Of course,” she said. “Come in.” As I stepped into the room she said, “This sounds serious.”
“It is.”
She closed the door, then looked at me, her arms folded at her chest. “What is it?”
“Is there something going on between you and that Joel guy?”
“Something?”
“You know.” I hesitated and she tilted her head. “Romantic.”
She thought for a moment, then said softly, “I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. We’re close friends. I care about him. I don’t know where it’s going.”
I suddenly felt defensive. “You care about him? How long have you even known him?”
“I’ve known him longer than you think,” she said. “You’ve met him before, you know.”
“I have?”
“When you were four. He helped us move from Pasadena to Idaho.”
“How did you know him?”
“Anna, Joel’s sister, worked with your father at the hospital. Shortly after your father died, she disappeared. She had told Joel about the Elgen and told him that if anything happened to her he should help us hide.”
For the first time in my life I realized that all our moving around wasn’t just about me. “So you’ve known about the Elgen since I was born?”
“Of course. It was a company your father was working with. The MEI was something we thought might change the world, not the way Hatch does, but for the better. James Hatch worked with your father. In fact, we had him over for dinner.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Dr. Hatch was in our home?”
My mother nodded. “We called him Jim back then. He came over to the house once for a barbecue.”
I was speechless. It was like hearing my mother was in a book club with Hitler. “You barbecued with Dr. Hatch? The man who kidnapped you and tried to kill me?”
“He wasn’t trying to kill anyone back then. In fact, you weren’t even born. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant when they placed the MEI in the hospital. I gave birth to you the next week.”
“Then why didn’t you recognize him in the parking lot at PizzaMax?”
My mother smiled. “It had been almost fifteen years. He’s changed a lot since then. And he was wearing sunglasses.”
“This is unbelievable,” I said.
“Believe it or not, Jim Hatch was a pretty normal guy. He brought me flowers in the hospital when you were born.”
I struggled to process this. “What was he like?”
“He was a little insecure, but hardworking and very ambitious, wh
ich isn’t always a bad thing. I don’t know why he turned out the way he did. I think he got caught up in something that took him over. The lust for power can do that.”
“He’s insane now,” I said. “And evil.”
“Maybe. But he wasn’t back then. It’s easy to place people in black-and-white categories of good or bad, but the truth is there’s a lot of both in all of us.”
“You’re nothing like Hatch,” I said. “Neither am I.”
“You’re right. There’s one big difference.”
“What’s that?”
“Love.”
“He loves himself,” I said.
My mother shook her head. “No. He feeds his hunger, but that’s not self-love, just selfishness. Deep down he must hate himself or he could never be so cruel. When people do things contrary to their own moral foundation, they either feel guilty and change or try to break down the foundation of their belief.
“Jim Hatch has tortured and killed people. Unless you’re a sociopath, the only way to do things like that and still live with yourself is to convince yourself that the end justifies the means.”
I just sat quietly thinking.
“And, Michael, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not going to do anything foolish.” She stepped closer. “I’m glad you came over. I wanted to talk to you about something too.”
I looked up at her.
“I’m afraid.” She breathed out slowly. “Afraid and conflicted. And I don’t know what to tell you to do.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I’m terrified of you going to Taiwan. I feel like any mother must feel sending a son off to harm’s way. If the reasons weren’t so important, I’d never let you go.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Part of me is so proud of you that I’m without words. The other part . . .” She wiped her eyes. “I’m still your mother. I’m supposed to protect you.”
I bowed my head. I didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not fair that you’ve been placed in this position. You’re so young.”
“Alexander the Great was only sixteen when he ruled the world,” I said. “And Joan of Arc was only seventeen when she led the French army.”