Silent Assassin(36)

“I don’t know—”

The man grabbed Stuart’s hair and pulled his head back, raising his hand to strike Stuart’s face. “Tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. Tell me. I dare you.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he said, doing a fairly good job of sounding convincing.

The red-masked man’s hand came down to strike him, but before it hit, it was stayed by another hand: it was the man in the black mask. “Hold on,” he said. Then, looking down at Stuart: “We know that you know, Len.” His voice was deep, and not as cool as that of the man in the red mask—smoother, but just as chilling. “And make no mistake about it: we are prepared to kill you if you don’t give us what we came here for. Now, you can cooperate, or you can die painfully. The choice is yours.”

Stuart gulped. “He’ll kill me.”

“We’ll kill you,” said the man in the black mask.

“Who is he?” asked the man in the red mask, moving toward Stuart as he did.

There was no getting away from this. They had him, literally tied up, and they knew. There was no way he was going to talk himself out of this one. Cooperating was the only way, even if it meant . . . well, he wouldn’t think about it right now. “I want protection. I want to be in custody. I want you to guarantee that he won’t kill me.”

“We’re not gonna offer you protection, Len,” said the man in the red mask. “You’ve got yourself involved with some very nasty people so you could make a quick buck on the bodies of dozens of innocent people. That’s on you. I’d plug you myself if we didn’t have use for you. To them, though, you’re just a liability, especially once they know we’re on to you. So here’s what you’re gonna do: you’re gonna give us everything you know, and do everything you can so we can catch these sons of bitches. And in return, we get rid of them and pinky-swear that any bullet that scrambles that genius brain of yours doesn’t belong to us.”

“And remember,” said the man in the black mask, “all this is contingent on you being useful to us. So you’d best start talking now, ’cause this is the best deal you’re gonna get.”

Len Stuart took a deep breath.

“From the beginning, Len,” said the man in the red mask.

He’d have to tell them. There was no way out now, except hope. “I heard about it through a friend. A solid guy. We’d exchanged information before, and not the kind the SEC looks kindly on, so I knew he had some hookups. He said he knew a guy who was selling this tip. Some shady kind of guy, billing himself as some sort of mastermind. Called himself Moriarty. Apparently, that’s some kingpin from the Sherlock Holmes books. I looked it up. Anyway, this Moriarty guy is supposed to be a sure thing, a way to make a lot of money quick, boom-boom. Something top secret, especially illegal, super risky, extremely—”

“Wrong?” said the man in the red mask.

Stuart gave a hollow chuckle. “No such thing in my line of work.”

“So he gave you this man’s number,” said the other.

“No,” said Stuart. “No numbers. I got a location and a time. I was told that he would meet me there, and that I should bring two hundred thousand dollars, cash.”

“Where?”

“He told me I had to order a large coffee at Starbucks and sit on the Broadway and Cedar corner of Zuccotti Park, reading the Wall Street Journal. So I do that, with my black Samsonite rolling suitcase with two hundred grand. After a few minutes, a guy in a Yankees cap sits next to me. He slips me a piece of paper, and tells me to get up and walk away, and leave the suitcase for him.”

“Two hundred grand for a piece of paper?”

“Worth a lot more than that if you know how to use it.”

“What did he look like, this Moriarty?” the man in the black mask cut in.

“Average height. Just under six foot. A bit on the skinny side. Asian. Didn’t see much of his face. He had big aviator sunglasses on.”

“How old?”

“I don’t know,” Stuart said.

“You’d better remember, or I’ll find the right incentive that will.”

Stuart was sweating nervously. “Okay. Okay, I’ll tell you. But I couldn’t tell much when I met him. A bit younger than me, maybe.”

“What was he wearing apart from the hat and sunglasses?” asked the man in the red mask.

“Blue jeans and a dark grey hoodie,” said Stuart.

“Anything written on it?”

“Not that I remember.”

“And the piece of paper—”