“Black ops money.”
Sterling nods. “He was never a part of the group. He was the bookkeeper as far as we were concerned. Then he started getting too curious. He wasn’t reliable. He heard too much.”
“Like Megan heard too much.”
“I don’t know about any of that. I didn’t want to know. Don’t you understand? Megan was Pete’s girlfriend. Sure, she heard more than she should have and she knew it. They were going to dispose of her and her friends. Anybody she might have told. She came to me to protect her. I told her I would. But if Praetorian had known, they might have killed me! So I had to do it and get it disposed of.”
It.
I say, “She was more than just Pete’s girlfriend. Megan couldn’t resist showing her sister the Tiffany key pendant that her prosperous older lover had given her. It looks just like the one you gave Melinda. You were her lover, Jim. She trusted you to protect her, and you murdered her.”
Melinda hisses, “Oh, my God.” She falls back on her haunches and leans on the edge of the desk.
“Megan was a regular at the parties, at the island.” I throw the dice. It’s the kind of question that can open a door, or let the guy know you’re a fool. I speak it with conviction, adding, “You didn’t seem like the type who went for the underage girls, but I guess we don’t really know anybody, do we?”
Sterling gazes past me, as if he’s reliving it. “The group came to the island to relax. The girls were a big draw. Clean, middle-class, intelligent. A little wild, an eye for wealthy men. Nobody was supposed to be hurt.”
“The island?” Melinda asks.
Tyee Island. It is one of some 450 in the San Juans, off the tip of the Washington state mainland. The Sterlings and Forrests have owned Tyee for decades. It’s secluded, exclusive. So private as to be nearly secret, even within the company. Even the executive editor has never been there, but Melinda has. So had Troy Hardesty; he mentioned it in passing when I wrote the first column about him. Couldn’t resist bragging to me, “I’ve been to the island,” and letting me know he had connections to my publisher. That vital fact had been buried in my old notebook, one of the documents the fake National Security Letter demanded. I had overlooked it before.
Tyee Island. It’s where the Governor himself had built a little Bavarian village. One house was supposedly painted in a nursery rhyme theme. Hardly anybody outside the family knows much about the island. But I remember one of the photos of the village that ran in the Seattle Times the day it reported on the Free Press’ impending closing. One showed a house decorated with Jack and the Beanstalk. A detail that Heather, who came to the island as an adventurous virgin, remembered.
“The island is where they cooked up eleven/eleven,” I say, working hard to check myself from asking too much, too fast. But I also know Amber will be here soon and then he may not say much. Right now, even though he’s on the floor and I pu
t him there, he thinks I’m just another idiot who works for him. Being underestimated can be an advantage—you want it from every source in a confrontation interview.
Sure enough, Sterling can’t resist. “It was where the group relaxed. Business wasn’t generally talked about. The slip with Megan showed the risks of that.”
“The group,” I say. “Pete Montgomery, you…” I swallow hard. “Craig Summers.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waves his hand. I understand where the cliché phrase “my heart sank” originated.
“You’re a pretty good digger.”
“Summers,” I repeat.
“He’s former CIA,” Sterling says. “But you know that. He’s serving his country just like the rest of us. He’s in over his head, but we need a guy like him. We couldn’t freeze him out. We couldn’t…”
“Kill him?”
Sterling looks like he wants to stand up and take me on. Then he thinks better of it and just shakes his head. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with. This isn’t just a few guys from the Northwest. It’s international. Some of the richest men in the world are in the group. Politicians. You’d be surprised who some of them are. It’s been in the planning for years. I was lucky to get in, thanks to my friendship with Pete.”
He says it as if he’s talking about a smart investment tip picked up at the Washington Athletic Club, which I suppose is how his brain processes it.
“But why didn’t you stop me when I wrote about Olympic?”
“Because I knew it would just make you dig deeper. Hell, you might have given it to the Seattle Times. But you ended up fucking up the deal.”
“Animal Spirits LLC. That was ‘the group,’ as you call it. Take Olympic private and cash out, before eleven/eleven…” I circle back nonchalantly. “Get rid of the old Olympic assets quietly. Then, when the markets calmed down, take Praetorian public and make a killing.” Talk to me. You’re the brain here. I’m just the stupid columnist.
“They wanted to pump up the stock price on anticipation of a takeover and then front run it,” he says. In other words, illegally sell Olympic stock using information not available to other investors, making a big profit just before the price declined. Declined on, say, the panic following a domestic terrorist attack.
He rocks forward and angrily gesticulates. “There wasn’t a lot of time. The group got nervous. Wanted to make sure their profits were locked in, no matter what. The government is divided, at war with itself, don’t you see? The patriots against the weak ones, the ones who don’t understand the threats we’re facing. We didn’t know if our friends inside would protect us until…” He stops himself, before going on to lecture me. “We were preparing for the future, the real future in a dangerous world.”
“The future where you keep people afraid,” I say, “and private contractors like Praetorian are the growth industries. It won’t work.” I laugh and shake my head. “People are smarter now than they were after September 11th. They’ve seen the abuses. They won’t stand for it….”
“Of course they will!” His voice goes scratchy: tenor and sandpaper. “They’ll demand it.” He gives me a superior look.