I gave in and we started shorting the stocks. Nothing big. A couple of thousand here and there. Enough to keep them off his back. He had less than a year to go for parole.”
“Why did they kill him if he was their golden goose?”
“I don’t know if Investcomp picked up on the delaying trend, or whether as a routine update of the software, they found the flaw or his back door. All of a sudden, Michael couldn’t get in. When he told Radek, Michael said that he went nuts. That was the last time I talked to him.”
“That’s when he was killed,” Vail said.
“Yes. Of course, I had no way of knowing since I wasn’t listed anywhere in the prison records. A couple of days after our last conversation, the phone rings. It’s Radek. He’s vague, but he’s talking to me like I’m his girlfriend, telling me he’ll be out soon, and he’s looking forward to seeing me. I’m freaked out, but I keep my cool and ask him to have Michael call me. The last thing he said to me was ‘Oh, by the way, Michael was beaten to death today,’ and hangs up. Just like that.”
“So Radek gets out and has you as a ready-made accomplice for his extortion. One with the right connections. And you can’t object because he’ll implicate you in the Investcomp scam.”
“Exactly, but it wasn’t quite that hands-off. The first I learn of his plan is when I wake up a couple of months later in the middle of the night, and he’s standing in my bedroom. He introduces himself and proceeds to rape me. And I’m not talking about forcing me to have sex, I’m talking about how they do it in prison, starting with a beating and ending…well, I’ll leave that to your imagination. Then he rolls over, lights a cigarette, and starts talking to me, again like I’m his girlfriend. That’s when he starts laying out the extortion plan, and how I’m an important part of it. I must have looked incredulous, because he slapped me so hard I was almost knocked out. He never said anything about murdering people. But that was his MO. The plan presented never sounded that violent, until you were in the middle of it.”
“I assume he chose his murder victims by who was in the news and at war with the FBI.”
“All but Arthur Bellington.” Tye’s eyes started to well up. “Then, I guess because he hadn’t degraded me enough with the rapes, he tells me I have to pick the third victim. He said it was so I’d be as guilty as the rest of them, but it was really about finishing the destruction of any of my character that might have been left. So I told him he should kill Bellington. I knew he had represented Radek in those armored-car robberies. At first Radek protested, but I told him if he ever became a suspect in the extortion, it was a perfect defense for him. Why would he kill the man who had previously kept him from spending the rest of his life in prison? At that point I wanted Bellington dead for that very reason. Because of him, Radek was out of prison and was able to rape and murder at will.”
“And you were the one who came up with Bertok’s name for them?” Tears started running down her cheeks. She was shaking, unable to speak for a few seconds. “They needed an agent of questionable character; otherwise the Bureau would have known right away that he was not a thief and had been kidnapped. Then they would give the media the whole story of the extortion and murders in an effort to enlist the public’s help in rescuing the agent. Radek would never have gotten another cent.
“I swear, Steve, he was just supposed to be kidnapped by masked gunmen and held until they had the entire five million. If I knew they were going to kill him, I would have come forward right then and taken the consequences. I know that sounds hypocritical because of the others being murdered, but as big a mess as Stan was, he didn’t deserve to die.”
“And you supplied Radek with Pendaran’s undercover name so he could buy the extra Glock gun barrel.”
“Like I showed you, it was in the computer.”
“What about Dan West’s murder? The tape of the conversation between him and his killer made him sound like an agent.”
“That was Salton. We assumed