The Blueprint (The Upgrade Book 1) (18 page)

“Remember the time when you only had to pay going
to
the city?” he said to Schlager.

“I do,” said Max, putting his tablet down and staring ahead in the tunnel.

Jason stepped on the gas again, tailgating the car in front of them, anxious to get out of the tunnel. Finally they were out and he sighed, feeling his claustrophobia go.

They drove in silence for some time, the low hum of the powerful engine the only sound filling the cabin.

“Have you seen it yourself yet?” said Max.

“No,” said Jason taking, the exit on a small service road. “It would be the first time.”

They parked on the side of the street and got out of the car. The bright afternoon sun was melting the dirty snow along the side of the road. Jason could hear the birds chirping somewhere in the trees, prematurely celebrating the end of winter. Despite the somber mood he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of hope stirring in his chest.

He unlocked the doors, and they went inside the small building, their breath coming out in white puffs. The plain white walls glowed, softly illuminating the bare room.

Jason kneeled on the floor and opened the rectangular panel revealing the ladder underneath. They climbed downstairs, and Jason went straight to the eight-foot tall chrome-colored tank. He opened the sliding panel on its side to reveal a frost-covered window and patiently scraped the ice off the glass with his hands. He looked inside for some time and finally stepped back, gesturing to Max to look.

Max took a small step and peered inside the tank.

“Fuck me,” he whispered.

Inside the tank, suspended in the glowing yellow liquid like a fly inside amber, was the floating body of Rachel Hunt.

Latham finished his tea and paid the check, looking appreciatively at the waitress. She was in her early twenties and just the way he liked, thick, big breasted, with powerful hands. He would have liked to get to know her better, but he didn’t have the time. He thanked her, his eyes lingering on top of her blouse for much longer than appropriate, and left the restaurant.

Latham walked across the street to the parking lot and got into the Mercedes. He preferred his cars just like his women, big and powerful. The 600-horsepower bi-turbo V-8 engine roared to life with a touch of a button, and the tank of a vehicle slowly rolled out to the street.

A few minutes later he eased the SUV into the highway traffic and dialed a phone.

“Mayor’s office, this is Debra” said a pleasant female voice. “How may I help you?”

“Hi, Debra.” he said, “My name is Latham Watkins; I’m calling to confirm the meeting.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Your meeting is confirmed; we’re expecting you in forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be there.”

Latham ended the call and stepped on the gas, weaving in and out of traffic. Twenty minutes later he left the car in the reserved underground parking lot and went through the security checkpoint. The meeting wasn’t taking place in the actual mayor’s office. The two were supposed to meet in a private conference room on the second floor, away from curious eyes.

When Latham entered the room, the mayor was already there, his powerful baritone echoing off the bare walls as he finished his phone call. He nodded to Latham to take a seat.

“So what can I do for Mister Engle?” he said hanging up the phone.

“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Mayor,” said Latham, offering his hand.

“Let’s cut the crap, shall we? This meeting is a serious breach of protocol,” replied the man, ignoring the gesture. His big ebony hands remained immobile on the polished surface of the conference table.

“Alright,” said Latham, “a man of action. I like that.” He stood and, bending over the table, lightly tapped mayor’s right hand.

“I’m losing my patience,” said the man. “What’s this all about?”

“Mr. Engel tasked me to find out what you know about Alpha One.”

“Fuck this,” replied the mayor, getting up. “I knew it was a waste of time.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Latham quietly.

“Do what?” The mayor swayed on his feet slightly, and then grabbed the table for support. His knees buckled, and he fell back into the chair, his head hitting the wooden back.

“What the—” he managed to say, then paralysis overcame his entire body.

“I’m here to make a small presentation,” said Latham getting up, and walking around the mayor, “which wouldn’t be required if you answered my questions.”

He stopped behind the big man and patted him on the shoulder.

“Just so you understand, what’s happening…” He took out a small pipette and carefully peeled the plastic covering its end. “You are fully paralyzed, yet you can hear and see and, most important, feel everything.”

Latham held up the pipette in front of mayor’s face.

“This is an interesting toxin.” He swayed the little instrument back and forth. “Its chemistry is way more complex than you or I would understand. What I do know is that one drop of it will make you feel like you’re being burned alive for about ten seconds. Intense stuff.”

Big drops of perspiration started rolling down the mayor’s cheeks, his breathing heavy.

“Ten seconds doesn’t sound like much.” Latham walked back to his chair. “But trust me, it feels like an eternity. So, if you’re ready to tell me about your connection to Alpha One, please roll your eyes up and down. They should still be working.”

The man kept staring straight at Latham, drops of sweat covering now his entire face.

“Alright then,” Latham said, forcing the mayor’s mouth open with his left hand and producing a single drop of clear liquid onto the man’s tongue.

A deep guttural moan came from somewhere inside the big man’s body, his pupils dilating in response to the intense pain. It lasted about ten seconds, just as Latham had predicted.

“Beats tequila shots, doesn’t it?” Latham said, patting the mayor on a sweaty hand. “The interesting thing about this stuff is math. You would think that two drops would work twice as long right? Wrong. It actually works four times as long. Forty seconds.”

The mayor’s breathing has become erratic, drool running down his chin, mixing with sweat.

“Don’t know how long three drops would work, though,” continued Latham. “Nobody’s made long enough to find out. Shall we try the two drop wonder, or are you ready to talk?”

The big white orbs popping out of the mayor’s face moved up and down.

“Great,” said Latham, putting the pipette away and producing a small capsule from a side pocket. He brought it to the man’s face and broke it under his nose, holding it there for a few seconds. The big man slumped in his chair, life slowly returning to his limbs.

“I don’t know very much,” said the mayor, the words coming out in short raspy breaths. “All I know that he’s overseas. Englishman, if I had to guess.”

“How do you figure that?”

“One time I had a call with him. The voice masking didn’t kick in for a second or two. He had a distinct English accent. Very posh. But I almost never speak to him. I usually speak to Alpha Four, who reports to him.”

“What else?” said Latham. “Do you know anything about Alpha Four?”

“I know exactly who Alpha Four is,” said the mayor in a shaky voice. “His name is Guy Brennan, and he’s a police captain.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s all I know, I swear,” said the big man.

Latham left the mayor in the conference room and headed to the elevator. His trip turned out to be more productive than he had anticipated. The findings posed some obvious problems, however. Despite the fact that uncovering the origins of Alpha One was a big break, going after the Englishman for now was out of the question. Alpha Four was the next logical step, but it wouldn’t be easy. Unlike the mayor, who had an ongoing relationship with Mr. Engel, the police captain would be hard to get alone without raising suspicion.

When he reached the underground garage Latham placed a secure phone call.

“Hey, boss, this is Latham,” he said when Alexander answered.

“What have you found?”

“Couple of interesting things. The guy we’re looking for is English. According to our friend here, he’s actually across the pond.”

“Interesting,” said Engel. “That narrows down the search, but we need more.”

“Also,” continued Latham, “I know who Alpha Four is. His name is Guy Brennan, and he’s a police captain here in the city. I’ll look him up, but I don’t think I have an obvious way to get in touch with him. Do you know anyone who could pull the right strings, boss?”

“Not off the top of my head,” said Engel, “but I’ll look. Good work, Latham. Continue to dig and report to me as soon as you have something.”

The line went silent, and Latham hung up the phone. He went back to the car and sat there for a few minutes thinking. There were a few people he could possibly use to get to the police captain but, they were too far removed. Latham Watkins needed a plan.

When the alarm finally went off at five o’clock on Monday morning, Jason was already shaven, showered, and on his second cup of coffee. By the look of him, Max hadn’t slept at all, dark circles drowning his eyes as he peered at the multiple screens in front of him.

“We have seven accounts,” he said, pointing to one of the screens. “Three onshore and four offshore.”

“Not too many?” said Jason.

“Not really. Frankly, I would like to have even more, but it gets much harder to manage. Think of Asclepius as a cow that falls into piranha infested waters. Each little fish takes a quick small bite, but before you know it all that’s left from the big animal is a bunch of bones.”

“Impossible to trace who got what,” said Jason.

“Exactly right. Davis’s report will come out at 9:31, just a minute after the exchanges open. They’ll probably halt it for half an hour or so and then…” He waved his hand in the direction of multiple screens. “Then we strike.”

“Is this what I think it is?” Jason pointed at one of the windows showing 0%.

“Yep, that’s how much of the company we own in real time. We don’t need the whole float. It’d be impossible to buy. Just a little over of 50%.”

Jason spent the remaining time watching Max checking and re-checking some programs that would take over once the trading resumed, pinging the servers be used to route the orders and measuring their response time.

The stock opened at $9.97 making Asclepius’ market cap just under half a billion dollars. Jason had to remind himself to breathe as he watched the ticks driving the price up and down. A minute later a headline flashed across one of the screens, sending the AI’s of the big banks into a frenzy.

Sophisticated algorithms looking for keywords in the big data flowing through the markets immediately picked up the words “fraudulent accounting” along with the name of the company and the firm issuing the report. They fired off sell orders flooding the markets with shares and driving the price down.

As the price went down accounts that used credit to purchase the shares received margin calls, prompting more selling and putting even more pressure on the price. When the halting mechanism of the exchange finally kicked in the stock was trading at $4.57, effectively cutting the value of the company in half.

“Holy shit,” said Jason, looking at the frozen number, a lone stationary object in the sea of blinking red and green.

“Yeah,” said Max, “holy shit. And now we wait.”

The stock was halted for thirty-two minutes, and when it finally resumed trading the opening bid was $0.17, making the valuation of the company around eight and a half million. Jason saw numbers quickly change in account windows as Max’s programs started buying the shares. The big zero showing their ownership changed to 1% and started to creep up. In less than half an hour it stood at 17%.

“What the hell,” cried out Max, almost falling out of his chair, his hands flying over the keyboard punching in a flurry of commands.

“What’s happening?” Jason said in alarm, watching the percentage representing their stake rapidly decline and the price of the stock rise to almost two dollars per share.

“Somebody’s doing the same thing we are,” said Max. “I’m dumping the shares to keep the pressure on the price, otherwise we’ll run out of money before we can buy enough.”

The symbol turned yellow again, signaling that the trading had been halted for the second time. The window read 12%.

“Fuck me,” said Max leaning back in his chair, “it’s not what I had in mind, but we still have a chance.”

“What now?”

“Now we wait and try it again,” said Max. “The bad news is we just made a ton of money.”

“That’s the bad news?” said Jason.

“It actually is,” said Max, “as it will draw much more scrutiny. It’s one thing to buy the shares of the company when it’s down. That’s called speculation. To make a lot of money on the news that may or may not hold up in couple of days will bring a lot of heat.”

“How much money did we make?”

“Well.” Max looked back and forth between the screens. “Roughly three and a half mil.”

This time the halt lasted only seventeen minutes. When the trading resumed, the price stood at $0.12 per share, and Max opened the floodgates of buying orders again. This time knowing there was another player, who was trying to accumulate a big stake and did not seem to care about the price, Max went for speed rather than stealth. Big orders started to come in, the number on the center screen going up at an accelerated pace.

When it hit 54% Jason saw Max shut the programs down and lean back in his chair.

“You did it,” said Jason, watching his friend with a mix of admiration and fear. “I always knew you were good, but I never knew
how good
you were.”

“I’ll be quite a star in federal prison.” Max flashed a quick tired smile. “But I think we just pulled off the heist of the century. But just so you know, I cheated.”

“Cheated how? I thought we were cheating from the beginning.”

“Well,” Max shifted in his chair uncomfortably. ”There were a lot of unknowns in a deal like this. While I didn’t know specifically that somebody would try my piranha method today, I knew that not everyone would be selling.”