Final Strike--A Sean Falcone Novel Page 4

  He gave her the phone number of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski and asked her to put through a call. “It’s evening there, right?”

  She nodded, and as she turned to leave, Christakos said, “And get me whatever you can find about the sinking of that yacht and the guy who owned it, a Russian named Basayev.”

  * * *

  Hamilton is a bit strange, Christakos thought, recalling where and how they had first met three weeks before: the J. Edgar Hoover Building, on Pennsylvania Avenue, headquarters of the FBI. Looking back on that day, Christakos remembered when Butera answered the phone and heard the name Robert Wentworth Hamilton. She had not hesitated to put Christakos on the line. Hamilton was not on Christakos’ retainer client list. But he was one of the richest men in the world.

  Hamilton had not said, “Hello,” like an ordinary mortal. He began by saying, “I called you because I read somewhere that you are one of the best defense lawyers in Washington.” Hamilton had sounded indignant, like a man who had just been handed an unexpected parking ticket.

  “I’m flattered, Mr. Hamilton,” Christakos said. “What is—”

  “I find I suddenly need a lawyer,” Hamilton had interrupted. “I’ve been summoned to meet tomorrow at ten with an FBI agent who is working on a shooting at my lawyer’s office. He said I am ‘a person of interest.’”

  Christakos instantly knew that Hamilton was referring to the murder of a partner, a secretary, and two clients at Sullivan & Ford, a major Washington law firm.

  “So Harold Davidson was your lawyer?” Christakos asked, naming the partner who was slain.

  “No,” Hamilton replied irritably. “Never met Davidson. My lawyer was someone else. Now my ex-lawyer. Not worth going into. I’m flying to Washington tonight. I will meet you tomorrow at the FBI.”

  “I suggest that we meet at my office first,” Christakos said. “We need to go over what brought on that ‘person of interest’ label. And see what—”

  “Not possible,” Hamilton interrupted. “I’m on a tight schedule. I will see you tomorrow.” Click.

  Christakos remembered hearing that Paul Sprague, managing partner of Sullivan & Ford, had just resigned from the firm, and he assumed that Sprague had been Hamilton’s lawyer. Like every lawyer in Washington, Christakos had heard dozens of rumors about the shootings at Sullivan & Ford. He wondered if the FBI’s interest in Hamilton had to do with the shootings or SpaceMine.

  After a spectacular public relations campaign, SpaceMine had sent a spacecraft to an asteroid that had been selected as a site for mining platinum and other valuable minerals. Hamilton was about to turn SpaceMine into a publicly traded corporation. But traders and hedge-fund managers, after looking into the technical challenges and literally astronomical costs, were losing enthusiasm for such an out-of-this-world venture. All this went through Christakos’ mind as he waited for the call to Hamilton.

  Now, closing the file folder, he realized that his most finely etched memory of Hamilton was of his body language, not his staccato delivery of words during the short FBI interrogation. Christakos drilled into the heads of his clients that it was against the law to lie to a federal officer. Many times he had explained that FBI agents were trained to gain the confidence of a potential suspect and then ask questions. If the person asked immediately for a lawyer, the questioning usually stopped. But, if the person answered a question with a lie, the federal law could be invoked.

  Hamilton, perhaps already schooled by Sprague, had not needed any instructions. He remained calm, almost impassive, as an FBI agent listed the litany of charges the Bureau was prepared to bring against him as an accessory to the murders. Hamilton never flinched. Never. Behind the cool exterior, Christakos saw a diamond-hard toughness and an arrogance that was different … somehow strange.

  Typically, someone questioned by an FBI agent shows some nervousness, some opening that the agent could exploit. Not Hamilton.

  Christakos quickly realized that the FBI agent lacked enough of a case for a U.S. attorney to present to a grand jury. So the agent had hoped to lead Hamilton into a trap by getting him angry enough to blurt out an incriminating statement or a careless remark. The agent failed. Christakos had little more to do than look stern and keep corralling the agent.

  Just about all the FBI seemed to have on Hamilton was a dubious claim that he had tampered with evidence, namely a laptop that had been taken from the Sullivan & Ford offices by the shooters. The FBI claimed that a SpaceMine engineer’s memo had been erased from the laptop. Christakos had mocked the memo as invisible evidence. The engineer—Cole Perenchio—had later also been murdered, apparently by the same two gunmen who had shot up the law office.

  Police had tracked and killed the gunmen when they chose to shoot it out. So, as far as Christakos could see, from a legal standpoint, the murder cases were closed and Hamilton’s handling of the laptop was more moot than indictable. The short interview ended with Christakos convinced that Hamilton’s person-of-interest label was realistically nothing more than the pipedream of an overly zealous FBI agent.

  As they’d walked out of the Hoover Building together, Christakos said, laughing, “You didn’t need me. You seem to have an instinct for warding off trouble. Did you ever think of being a lawyer?”

  “Never!” Hamilton had exclaimed indignantly. He made a call on his cell phone and in moments a black limousine pulled up. Without saying goodbye or offering a ride, Hamilton sped off to Dulles Airport to board his private aircraft and return to Silicon Valley. That was the last Christakos saw or heard of Hamilton until Sandra Vanderlang’s call.

  * * *

  “The hotel operator—her English is fine—says she cannot get through to Hamilton,” Butera said. “I asked why and she just repeated, ‘can’t get through.’”

  “Any explanation?”

  “No. I looked up the Baltschug Kempinski online. It’s a five-star, very expensive, very posh. I asked for the concierge and did get through. His English was poor, but he just said that Hamilton was ‘not available.’”

  “Interesting. ‘Not available’ is not the same as ‘can’t get through.’ Try again in an hour. That won’t be too late, will it?”

  “No. And maybe we’ll luck into another operator.”

  “I want to talk to him before Ms. Vanderlang shows up tomorrow.”

  “Right. And here’s a rundown on that yacht sinking. Also, a little background on Basayev. Interesting stuff,” she said, handing him two printouts.

  Basayev’s Aglaya—“Splendor” in Russian—was 532 feet long, had four topside decks, and was second in size only to the 590-foot yacht owned by the Emir of Abu Dhabi. Aglaya had two helicopter pads, two swimming pools, and accommodations for a couple of dozen guests.

  Christakos remembered the couple days of newspaper and television coverage of the sinking of the Aglaya in the Black Sea, off the Turkey coast. According to a spokesman for the Turkish Navy, the first report of the sinking came from a fisherman who heard an explosion and saw flames. A Turkish destroyer sent to the area at first light found wreckage identified as the Aglaya but no survivors. The Times quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that the cause of the sinking was a boiler explosion. According to the official, Basayev went down with the yacht, along with an unknown number of crew members and guests.

  A Times obituary called Basayev “a shadowy oligarch whose fabulous wealth had been grounded in the favor he found with Vladimir Putin and his successor, Boris Lebed.” The obituary also said that “some law-enforcement officials linked him to a criminal group rooted in Russia and branching out to the so-called Russian Mafia in the United States.”

  Christakos went back to the description of the Aglaya sinking, underlined “boiler explosion,” and had Butera put in a call to a cousin in Greece who owned a shipyard. After the usual round of family news and promises of visits to each other, the cousin, Dimitri, switched to English and said, “Okay, Akis. I believe your fee is a thousand dollars an hour. Mine’s much less.
What exactly do you want for one of your cases?”

  “A simple question, Dimitri,” Christakos replied in English. “Does any modern yacht have a steam engine?”

  “Oh, you’re nosing around the Aglaya. I should have guessed. First, the answer is no. The Aglaya had two diesel engines, and they had been routinely inspected two weeks before she was sunk. It’s the most suspicious loss in years. Everybody at first said it was an insurance dodge. But no one has come up with an explanation. She was a Monaco-flagged ship, famous for her odd sailing courses, which looked like they were designed to outwit satellites’ orbits. The International Maritime Organization is looking into it and so is Turkey’s Maritime Casualties Investigation Council. As you know, things are not going so well with the Turks and Russians these days. But the word is they are getting nowhere. Not a trace of her, Akis. Not a trace.”

  “And the insurance dodge?”

  “The owner—I guess you know, Kuri Basayev—did not have any insurance on her! I have to wonder what her flag-registration papers look like.”

  “So what is the rumor of what sunk her?”

  Dimitri shifted to Greek to say he did not want to talk any more about the Aglaya. Christakos said goodbye with a solemn promise of a spring visit.

  As the day wore on, Butera reported three more unsuccessful attempts to reach Hamilton.

  “That’s enough, Vicki,” Christakos said. “I’m afraid our client has become incommunicado.”

  7

  Sandra Vanderlang swept into the reception room. Before Butera could offer her a seat or coffee, Vanderlang said, “Coffee, please. Black.” She pointed to the door to Christakos’ office. “In there?”

  Butera stood and nodded. She felt the slight breeze of Sandra Vanderlang’s black cape as, continuing nonstop, she opened the door to Christakos’ private office and strode to the high-backed chair in front of Christakos’ desk. He had hardly managed to stand before Vanderlang sat down, opened the clasp on her cape, gracefully shook it off her shoulders, and tossed it over an arm of the chair. She wore a black skirt that ended below her knees and a sharply tailored jacket over a blouse the color of cranberries.

  “Welcome, Ms. Vanderlang,” Christakos said, coming around the table, extending his right hand and turning on his charm. A serious fan of old movies, he often classified women by their resemblance to his favorite stars. Sandra Vanderlang—he judged her to be in her mid-thirties—was definitely in the Joan Crawford category.

  “For the record,” she said, “it’s Doctor Vanderlang.”

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” Christakos said with a slight bow. “I wasn’t able to find anything about you—nothing on Facebook, no LinkedIn profile.”

  “I can say the same for you, Mr. Christakos,” she said with a quick smile.

  “Oh, yes. That social media business. Like you, I have my own understanding of what ‘social’ and ‘media’ should be. Now, Dr. Vanderlang, please tell me why you are here.”

  At this moment, Butera came through the open door carrying a tray. She gave Christakos a raise of her eyebrows as a comment on a tough client. Then, after placing the tray on his desk, she disappeared behind the closing door.

  Vanderlang reached for a gilt-edged porcelain cup and saucer. She took a sip before answering, “I’m very, very worried about Mr. Hamilton.”

  Christakos closed the Hamilton folder and turned to a yellow pad. With a monogrammed silver pen he wrote the date and Sandra Vanderlang on the upper left corner.

  “First, should I assume you want me to continue to represent you, Dr. Vanderlang?” he asked.

  Vanderlang simply nodded.

  “Assuming there is no conflict in my representing Mr. Hamilton, then at this moment, we are entering into a lawyer-client relationship. If a conflict should emerge, then you’ll have to secure the services of another attorney. But from now on, everything either one of us says to the other is inside that relationship and absolutely confidential.”

  “I understand,” Vanderlang replied.

  Christakos changed his tone from professional to friendly. “First of all, I have not been able to communicate with Mr. Hamilton.”

  “I … I don’t understand,” she said, looking stunned.

  “I have tried repeatedly to ring his room, and I have been repeatedly told that he is ‘not available.’ When I made my first attempt, right after your call to me, the hotel operator said she ‘can’t get through.’ Then the message changed: He was ‘not available.’ That very much sounds to me like an official description. I believe he is being held incommunicado.”

  “You mean the Russians have … arrested him?”

  “Probably not officially. They may be confining him to the hotel.”

  “But if he … he’s an impatient man. I’m afraid that he’ll try to … escape.”

  “From what I’ve heard about him, he’s also a smart man, and won’t try anything reckless. Look. He’s been there—what, more than a week? I’m betting he’s waiting for another meeting with Lebed or one of Lebed’s cronies. From Mr. Hamilton’s viewpoint, there’s a deal cooking, and he knows that deals take time.”

  “But I don’t like the feel of this. He knows he’s needed at SpaceMine. I think the deal he’s most interested in is this immunity deal. What can we do, Mr. Christakos?”

  “Call me Christo,” he said, smiling. “As to what we can do, I can call the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and ask the ambassador to invoke the right to consular visits, which are guaranteed under a treaty signed by over one hundred countries, including the United States and Russia.” After a short pause he continued, “Now, an important question: Are you absolutely certain that he will leave Moscow only if he is granted immunity?”

  “Yes. He was quite adamant. And he wanted it on the authority of President Oxley.”

  “I’m sure that the signature of the attorney general will be sufficient and should be easy enough to arrange. But, first, some background. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “I see him every day—a usual morning meeting—where we go over various SpaceMine matters. The last time I saw him was ten days ago, the day after he came back from Washington. I guess that’s when he met with you.”

  “And with the FBI,” Christakos added. “What did he tell you about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing. But that wasn’t unusual. He did not confide in anyone, including me.”

  “Aren’t you on the verge of an initial public offering?” Christakos asked. “As I recall, Mr. Hamilton had said on one of those GNN SpaceMine shows that the company’s IPO was imminent.”

  “That’s right. Some Wall Street people are asking questions about the delay.”

  “What do you tell Wall Street?”

  “Well, of course we blame the delay on our lawyers,” she answered with another smile.

  Christakos smiled but quickly regained his serious mien. “Of course. Standard excuse. Now, why exactly did he tell you to come to me?”

  “I got the impression that Mr. Hamilton believes he needs a criminal defense lawyer because of whatever it was that led him to want you to go with him to that meeting with the FBI before he left for Moscow.”

  Christakos nodded and said, “Let’s go back to the last time you saw Mr. Hamilton.” He held his Montblanc pen poised as if he were a student eager to take notes.

  “We always meet in his office.”

  “Which is where?”

  “At SpaceMine’s headquarters in Palo Alto.”

  “So you had your regular meeting. He had been here, with me, the day before. And he said nothing to you about the FBI interview?”

  “Right.”

  “And he gave no hint that he was going somewhere?”

  “No. No hint.” Vanderlang shrugged, pursing her lips.

  “When did you become concerned?”

  “Next morning I went to his office. He always is there before I arrive. But he was not there. I called his personal assistant. He acts as a kind of errand boy and has nothing to do w
ith day-to-day SpaceMine operations. He told me that Mr. Hamilton was not in his residence—a suite on the top floor of the headquarters building. I called him there a couple of times during the day. No answer.”

  “Did you go to the residence, as you called it?”

  “No. I have never been in the residence,” Vanderlang said, the tenor of her voice and Joan Crawford–like stare warding off any notion that her relationship with Hamilton was anything less than professional. She might wear gold, but she made it clear that she was not one to dig for it.

  “So he apparently went off somewhere without notifying you?”

  “He’s often mysterious,” Vanderlang responded. She finished the coffee and placed the cup and saucer back on the desk. “It’s in his DNA to simply disappear once in a while, sometimes for two or three days. But he has always given me advance notice about his absences—telling me he would be gone, but usually not telling me where or why.”

  “Interesting,” Christakos said. “So he keeps you only partially informed? Even though you are a close business associate? Chief Operations Officer. That makes you second-in-command, right?”

  “Corporately, yes, more or less. I have to monitor what is going on, keeping things on track. He’s clearly running SpaceMine. One of my real jobs is to keep him in touch with the world beyond SpaceMine. He lives alone. Spartan apartment from what I’m told.”

  “Point made and taken,” Christakos acknowledged.

  “Security cameras. Few visitors. Employees with special clearance do the maintenance and cleaning. For food deliveries—he’s very particular about what he eats—he has his personal assistant call in his order to the same caterer that supplies the cafeteria.”

  “Looking back, do you have any clues about why he wound up in Moscow? Did he, for instance, get any odd phone calls?”

  “He’s not very communicative. He has an unlisted landline with a scrambler device. I also usually use a scrambler, but I don’t have access to his line. And his cell phone is rigged so that he can press a button and send to my cell phone numbers that he judges pertinent to SpaceMine. The numbers are usually accompanied by cryptic instructions that I take care of.”