Five hundred 500 $ US mil must be wired into account listed below by close of business 5:00 pm 1700 hours Boston time today
This is not open of negotiation
This is final offer.
If $$$ received satisfactory by 5:00 pm 1700 hours Boston time today your daughter Alexa will be released. You will be notified of her public place location and can pick her up then.
No further negotiation possible.
If $$$ not received by 5:00 pm 1700 hours Boston time today you will get one last opportunity to watch your daughter Alexa on internet
You will watch when coffin is flood with water.
You will watch your daughter drown before your eyes
You will watch last minutes of your daughters life
Then followed the name and address of a bank in Belize, bank codes, and an account number.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Nicky,” Marshall Marcus said, his voice high, quavering. “Dear God in heaven, please, Nick, help.”
“That’s all we’re doing,” I said. “Round the clock.”
“Five hundred million dollars? I don’t have that kind of money anymore, thanks to those bastards, and they damned well know it.”
“Where’s Belinda?”
“Belinda? She’s right here beside me. Like always. Why?”
“Let me get off the phone,” I said. “Maybe there’s a way to pull this off.”
“How?”
But I just hung up.
I leaned over and gave Diana a kiss.
“Call me as soon as you know anything,” she said.
83.
I arrived at the office with a Box o’ Joe from Dunkin’ Donuts and a dozen assorted donuts.
Half an hour later, after repeated calls to Belize City, I was on the phone with the Honorable Oliver Lindo, minister of national security in Belize.
“Nick!” he said. “Have you been trying to call me? I’m so sorry. I was at the gym. I have a personal trainer now. Someday I may even look like you, my man.”
“And how’s Peter?”
“Did you know he’s in his second year at Oxford, Nick?”
“I had no idea. Congratulations. Have you remarried, by any chance?”
He chuckled. “We have a saying here: Why buy the cow if the milk is free?”
“I may have heard that before,” I said.
No need to get explicit with Oliver Lindo. When I was working at Stoddard Associates in D.C., I’d helped him out with a sticky problem involving a boat, a rum factory, one of his ex-wives, and a lot of angry Cubans. Later he asked me to extricate his son, who was then at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, from a situation involving gangbangers in Trenton.
“Do you happen to know anyone at the Belize Bank and Trust Limited?”
“It is a shady bank, my friend. If you are thinking about hiding money, well, I can recommend—actually, this is not a conversation we should be having on the mobile phone.”
“If I ever have enough money to hide away somewhere, you’ll be the first person I’ll call,” I said. “But I’m calling about something else. I need a favor.”
“Anything you want, Nick. You know that.”
84.
“You want to explain to me how this is going to work?” Dorothy said.
“Just before the bank in Belize closes, Dragomir Zhukov is going to get a confirmation that five hundred million dollars has been deposited into his account,” I said.
She took a long sip of coffee from a mug that said JESUS SAVES—I SPEND. “And your friend in Belize can get this done?”
“He’ll pay a visit to the bank’s president himself. I’m guessing that this bank might not want to be complicit in the abduction of a teenage girl. Or maybe he has other means of persuasion. I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
“But it’s all a trick, right? The bank is going to confirm a deposit that was never made?”
“Of course.”
“But what’s the point? If this Zhukov guy has gone rogue, he doesn’t answer to anyone. It doesn’t make any difference whether he gets the money or not, he’s never going to let Alexa go.”
“Not if he thinks he doesn’t have to. That’s why the timing is crucial. There’s going to be a last-minute complication. Some screwup in the number of his bank account that requires him to make a call.”
“And you’ll be on the other end of that call.”
I shrugged. “I’m going to let him know that he gets the five hundred million only after he releases Alexa.”
She looked at her computer, looked at me. Looked down at the floor and then back up at me. “Nick, you’re delusional. You have no leverage. None. He’ll just refuse, he’ll say it’s my way or the highway, and then he’ll kill her.”