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brief case.
    By the
time Craig completed the switch, Pete had devoured his dinner and was curled up
on the couch sleeping peacefully. Craig showered and started dressing for work.
When he was selecting a tie, he noticed the old shoe box wrapped with an
elastic band that he’d been storing for years. He took it down and removed his
father’s hand gun. He hadn’t fired it in years, and was at best, an average shot,
but he’d kept the gun in good condition for sentimental reasons. Beside the gun
was a half full carton of ammunition. He loaded the gun, slipped it into his
pocket and finished dressing. He started feeling foolish, reminding himself
that he was a lawyer, not a vigilante. There was nothing connecting him to the
MLI master list, so there was no way the killer, whoever he was, would even
know he existed.
    When he
finally departed for work, he left the gun in his bedside table drawer.
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 2
     
     
    Rick Harriman and Hal Woods took seats
opposite Phil Powell in the interview room at Police Headquarters. Harriman sat
silently watching Powell, who avoided eye contact by studying his fingernails.
    “You bought two guns yesterday,”
Harriman said. “One was found with McCormack last night. I assume you have the
other?”
    Powell opened his jacket, revealing
the pistol in his shoulder holster.
    “You think that will save you?”
Harriman asked.
    “It’ll even the odds.”
    “We can protect you.”
    Powell smiled sourly. “No you can’t.”
    “Are you sure you don’t want our
help?”
    Powell met Harriman’s eyes for
the first time. “I’ll take any protection you can offer, Detective, but I
really don’t know why this is happening.”
    “What do you know?”
    Powell returned his gaze to his
fingernails, deep in thought, then briefly outlined what he knew about MLI,
adding, “We never met anyone face to face. Everything was done by phone or email.
The phone calls were scrambled, the emails encrypted. They provided us with the
equipment, all very advanced stuff. Nothing you could buy commercially. With
the files gone, I’m now all that’s left of the MLI money trail at the New York
end.”
    “So you think it’s a money
laundering operation?” Harriman asked.
    “No. We invested money for them,
all around the world, all in cash. They were very specific, it had to be in
cash.”
    “Why cash?” Woods asked.
    “Only reason you stay in cash is
so you can withdraw it fast,” Powell replied. “We directly invested as much as
we could, and used intermediaries in the world’s leading financial centers to
manage the rest. There was just so much of it, no one firm, no one country,
could invest it all.”
    Harriman’s eyes narrowed. “How
much are we talking about?”
    Powell leaned forward, and even
though they were in the privacy of an interview room, he whispered. “More than
a thousand billion dollars! I have no idea where it came from. We tried tracing
the source once. They knew immediately. They said if it happened again, they’d terminate
their business with us. We never tried again, because we knew, they were
watching everything we did.”
    “When you tried to trace it, how
far did you get?”
    “We followed the trail back through
a bank in Cameroon to Hong Kong, then to Switzerland. That’s when they caught
us.”
    “So what do you think MLI is a
front for?”
    Powell shrugged. “They’re not
listed on the stock exchange. It’s a private company, owned by a maze of other private
companies.”
    “We’ll start our own trace,”
Harriman said, nodding to Woods to take care of it. “In the mean time, we’ll
move you to a safe house while we work out a plan with the witness protection
program.”
    “For how long?”
    “Until we catch whoever is trying
to kill you.”
    “But you have no leads.”
    “Yeah, it’ll take time.”
    “I’m not going to be a prisoner. I’ll
take my chances,” he said, patting the gun beneath his jacket.
    “If you refuse