Free Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness by Sidney Sheldon Page B

cards up to the ceiling.
    â€œSee?” said John. “Everybody l-loves you, Grace. Everybody wants to help.”
    But the cards and flowers didn’t help. They were unwanted, tangible reminders that as far as the world was concerned, Lenny was dead.
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    T HREE MILES AWAY, IN THE FBI’s New York offices at 26 Federal Plaza, three men sat around a table:
    Peter Finch from the SEC was a short, amiable man, completely bald except for a thin tonsure of ginger hair that made him look like a monk. Normally, Finch was known for his good humor. Not today.
    â€œWhat we’re looking at here is the tip of the iceberg,” he said grimly.
    â€œPretty big fucking iceberg.” Harry Bain, the FBI’s assistant director in New York, shook his head in disbelief. At forty-two, Bain was one of the bureau’s highest fliers. Handsome, charming and Harvard-educated, with jet-black hair and piercing green eyes, Harry Bain had foiled two of the most significant domestic terror plots ever attempted on U.S. soil. Those had both been pretty huge cases. But if what Peter Finch was saying was true, this one could be even bigger.
    â€œHow much money are we talking about? Exactly?” Gavin Williams, another FBI agent who reported to Bain, spoke without looking up. Aformer SEC man himself, Williams had left the agency in disgust after the Bernie Madoff fiasco. A brilliant mathematician with higher degrees in modeling, statistics, data programming and analysis, as a young man he had dreamed of becoming an investment banker himself, joining the J. P. Morgan training program straight out of Wharton. But Gavin Williams had never quite made it. He lacked the killer commercial instincts necessary to take him to the top, as well as the political, people skills that had helped his far-less-intellectually-gifted classmates amass private fortunes in the tens of millions. Tall and wiry with close-cropped gray hair and a military bearing, Williams was a loner, as dour and emotionless as a statue. Brilliant, he might be. But in the clubby world of Wall Street, nobody wanted to do business with him.
    Deeply embittered by this rejection, Gavin Williams made the decision to devote the rest of his life to the pursuit of those who had made it to the top, cataloging their misdemeanors with crazed zeal. In the early days, working at the SEC had given him a tremendous sense of purpose. But all that changed after Madoff. The agency’s failings in that case were catastrophic. Gavin himself hadn’t worked on the case, but he felt tainted by collective embarrassment. Blinded by a simple Ponzi scheme! The thought of it still gave Gavin Williams sleepless nights, even now in his new dream job as the FBI’s top man on securities fraud.
    Peter Finch said, “It’s not yet clear. On the surface the accounts looked clean. But after Brookstein disappeared, all Quorum’s investors wanted their money back at once. It’s those redemptions that have revealed this black hole. And it’s growing by the day.”
    â€œBut there are billions of dollars missing here.” Harry Bain scratched his head. “How can that kind of money just evaporate?”
    â€œIt can’t. Maybe it got spent. Or lost, siphoned off into speculative, unprofitable private businesses controlled by Leonard Brookstein and his cronies. More likely Brookstein stashed it away somewhere. That’s what we’ve got to find out.”
    â€œOkay.” Harry Bain’s quick mind was working. “How long before this gets into the press?”
    Finch shrugged. “Not long. A few days, a week at most. Once investors start talking, it’ll be out there. I don’t need to tell you the implications this could have on the wider economy. Quorum was bigger thanGM, almost as big as AIG. Every small business in New York had exposure. Pensioners, families.”
    Bain got the picture. “I’ll handpick a task force of our best men to