The Greatest of These by Greg Wendleton (booksvooks txt) 📕

“Monday, 2300 hours. Should be getting close to the islands tomorrow or Friday.”

“Well, sounds like we don’t have a lot of time to waste. I’ll start rattling a few cages now and then get with the Director first thing this morning. Better get some sleep Wayne, looks like we’ll be at this for quite some time.”

“Will do boss. Sorry I had to disturb you, but glad you were available.”

“That’s the job, Wayne. Good night.” With that, the Assistant Director ended the call and went to work on his hunch about Conrad.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

FBI Assistant Director, Lee Mathison composed an email to a highly placed contact within the CIA and inquired about an old agent that had been cut lose from the Agency around 2000. Giving him as much information as possible to go on, he clicked Send, and waited for a reply.

He then composed an email to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and informed him of the shit storm that had taken place and the additional storm that could follow. He kept the email to the thirty-thousand-foot view in order to keep it as brief, yet succinct as possible. He asked if he should reach out to the UN Secretary General’s administrative assistant, Maggie Kuntz, who he had dealings with in the past. The UN Humanitarian Aid Counsel was the owner of the cargo in jeopardy, so they had to be consulted.

By the time he had written and sent those two emails it was after two o’clock on the morning of Thursday, February 25, and he was ready to lie down and try to catch three or four hours of sleep. He crawled back into his bed, next to his sleeping wife and quickly fell asleep himself.

When Special Agent Presley reentered the ICU area and the suite of the Wilhites they were both deep into a much-deserved sleep. I was sitting in a chair in the front, right corner of the suite, nodding off and giving myself whiplash. I felt the agent’s hand rest on my shoulder and I sat up straighter and slightly more alert.

“I’ve spoken to my Special Agent in Charge, in Honolulu, and he has taken this situation to the Assistant Director in Washington, D.C. We’ll wait to see what the brass wants to do before we make any further moves. I have a car with two agents parked outside with a clear view of the front entrance to the hospital and I have two agents posted down the corridor monitoring everyone coming into the ICU. I’ve called Captain Pang and given him an update and I just spoke to Chief Chun in Hana, the thug didn’t make it. So, that lead is gone. His phone was a burner and had a text trail to another burner. No names were ever revealed in the messages, but it was clearly a case of subordinate and superior communicating.”

“Wow, you’ve been very busy. Chad and Jamie are resting comfortably. Whatever they were drugged with worked its way out of their systems pretty quick after they came back too. Dr. Talbot will probably release them some time tomorrow, as long as they have no setbacks.”

“Let’s go back to the meeting room. We have a few issues to go over.”

I nodded my head and followed Special Agent Presley out of the ICU ward and back to our meeting room.

After we sat down, he said, “We’ve checked your bank account. There is over two million dollars in that account. A deposit was made yesterday, while you and I were on our flight from Dallas to Kahului.”

Sitting up very straight, defensively, I said, “Obviously, I didn’t make that deposit. It had to be Conrad trying to make me look complicit in his plan.”

“Relax Garret, that’s what I assumed as well. That’s a lot of ill-gotten, untaxed money sitting in the Cayman Islands though.”

“Yes sir, it is. If you need to freeze the account or confiscate the funds, I understand.”

Looking about the room and leaning forward, conspiratorially, Presley said, “You’re not a criminal, at heart, and you’re not a member of a criminal organization, by choice. Look, do you know how to set up another account that this Conrad character won’t find?”

“I’ve not done it before, but I think I could create a new account.”

“All right then. You do that, and start moving $9,900 or various sums, as long as they are less than $10,000 each, from that new account into a real US bank account. Maybe one that earns some interest that you’ll receive a 1099-Intrest form for each year and pay some taxes on it. Don’t ever speak of this again.”

“Yes sir.” I sat there dumbfounded, staring at the Special Agent.

“Well, get your laptop out and get busy. Don’t give me time to second guess myself.”

I reached into the laptop pack that I had taken on the helicopter to Hana and continued to carry with me in the hospital, and removed my laptop. I powered it up and then connected to the personal hot spot through my iPhone and logged onto the internet. I opened the bookmark for my Cayman bank account and logged into my account. Sure enough, my balance was $2,108,507.52. I opened a new account at the same bank and transferred $2,108,507.00, leaving a fifty-two cent “fuck you” for Conrad. I was sure he would try to recover the one million dollars he had deposited into the account yesterday.

After doing some research on off-shore accounts, I selected a more reputable Cayman bank, opened an account online and then scheduled a transfer for the full amount on Thursday morning, when they opened at 8:00am.

Was Special Agent Jerry Presley actually going to let me keep over two million dollars and walk away from my past? That remained to be seen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I left the Maui Health facility after slipping into the Wilhites suite to see for myself one more time