in which you will want to invest and/or contribute. I suggest you begin immediately with 15% of the $64 million you wanted to utilize.
Please complete that transaction within 48 hours of this message.
Follow that with an additional 32% investment of the total within 72 hours.
Marcello Cavatino Inversiónes, S.A., in Buenos Aires will be happy to provide you with the professional services necessary to execute these transactions.
The list of businesses and charities followed. One in Mexico, two in Brazil, one in Lebanon, one in St. Kitts, two in Monaco. Titus stared over the Mayan girl’s shoulder and gaped at the computer screen.
“Bonnie, see if you can find them, ”Burden said to the Asian woman, who was now wearing jeans and a Oaxacan embroidered
huipil.
She went to work on another computer.
Titus stared at the screen and sat in one of the chairs without saying a word. He was shaken. How many times could he be surprised like this? He didn’t know what he’d thought Luquín’s first message would be, but he hadn’t expected this.
“What’s the matter? ”Burden asked. “Liquidity?”
Titus was oblivious. The money. Jesus. He should have written it down on a piece of paper and looked at it. The whole thing had been so unreal that he hadn’t yet focused on what it would mean to divest himself of $64 million—a quarter of CaiText’s net worth. Seeing the beginnings of the process on the computer screen was unnerving.
“That’s nearly ten million dollars in two days, ”Burden said, “and then nearly twenty-one million three days after that.”
“Yes, I can get the ten. I’ll have to work on the twentyone.”
“Okay. Well, we have to move fast now, ”Burden said, glancing at his watch. “It’s three-thirty, for all practical purposes.”
Mattie turned to Titus.
“Luquín’s job here is a lot easier than laundering money,” she said. “With laundering you’re trying to cover up where the money came from. In this case that’s not a problem. Luquín wants to hide where it’s going. So when Cavatino disperses your investments among these seven enterprises, that’ll probably be the last time we’ll really know anything for sure about it. From those places it’ll be buried under an avalanche of trade.”
“García, ”Bonnie said from her computer, “the companies are coming up. All of them. No, wait, one of the charities, the one in Monaco, isn’t showing yet. All the companies are less than a year old. Marcello Cavatino Inversiónes, S.A., has been around three years.”
“Good. Do some work on them.”
But Burden was waiting, still staring at the computer screen with Mattie and the Mayan girl, as if they were all expecting another message. The room was silent except for Bonnie’s fingers snapping on the keys across the room.
The ping of another message was like a gunshot.
“Here we go, ”the Mayan girl said, and the screen flashed a short, terse message.
Charlie Thrush has paid for your stupidity. You should have lived with the surveillance.
Titus was standing again, again staring over the girl’s shoulder. It took him some time—he had no sense of dura tion—to make the two words fit into the context of the moment. Charlie Thrush?
Then Burden asked, “Where did Thrush live?”
The past tense of the question hit Titus like a blow to the stomach. Suddenly he had no moisture at all in his mouth. “On a ranch west of Austin.”
“Where? Exactly.”
“Fredericksburg. Near there. ”He thought he was going to be sick.
“Rosha, ”Burden said, and the Mayan girl swiveled to another computer and began typing furiously.
Titus saw Charlie talking, his lanky frame sprawled in a chair in front of one of his computer screens, his long fingers flapping on the keys as if he were playing the piano, his head half turned as he talked, explaining the theory behind the calculus and the quantum mechanics on the screen. He saw him with his head buried in a book in a small pool of
Please complete that transaction within 48 hours of this message.
Follow that with an additional 32% investment of the total within 72 hours.
Marcello Cavatino Inversiónes, S.A., in Buenos Aires will be happy to provide you with the professional services necessary to execute these transactions.
The list of businesses and charities followed. One in Mexico, two in Brazil, one in Lebanon, one in St. Kitts, two in Monaco. Titus stared over the Mayan girl’s shoulder and gaped at the computer screen.
“Bonnie, see if you can find them, ”Burden said to the Asian woman, who was now wearing jeans and a Oaxacan embroidered
huipil.
She went to work on another computer.
Titus stared at the screen and sat in one of the chairs without saying a word. He was shaken. How many times could he be surprised like this? He didn’t know what he’d thought Luquín’s first message would be, but he hadn’t expected this.
“What’s the matter? ”Burden asked. “Liquidity?”
Titus was oblivious. The money. Jesus. He should have written it down on a piece of paper and looked at it. The whole thing had been so unreal that he hadn’t yet focused on what it would mean to divest himself of $64 million—a quarter of CaiText’s net worth. Seeing the beginnings of the process on the computer screen was unnerving.
“That’s nearly ten million dollars in two days, ”Burden said, “and then nearly twenty-one million three days after that.”
“Yes, I can get the ten. I’ll have to work on the twentyone.”
“Okay. Well, we have to move fast now, ”Burden said, glancing at his watch. “It’s three-thirty, for all practical purposes.”
Mattie turned to Titus.
“Luquín’s job here is a lot easier than laundering money,” she said. “With laundering you’re trying to cover up where the money came from. In this case that’s not a problem. Luquín wants to hide where it’s going. So when Cavatino disperses your investments among these seven enterprises, that’ll probably be the last time we’ll really know anything for sure about it. From those places it’ll be buried under an avalanche of trade.”
“García, ”Bonnie said from her computer, “the companies are coming up. All of them. No, wait, one of the charities, the one in Monaco, isn’t showing yet. All the companies are less than a year old. Marcello Cavatino Inversiónes, S.A., has been around three years.”
“Good. Do some work on them.”
But Burden was waiting, still staring at the computer screen with Mattie and the Mayan girl, as if they were all expecting another message. The room was silent except for Bonnie’s fingers snapping on the keys across the room.
The ping of another message was like a gunshot.
“Here we go, ”the Mayan girl said, and the screen flashed a short, terse message.
Charlie Thrush has paid for your stupidity. You should have lived with the surveillance.
Titus was standing again, again staring over the girl’s shoulder. It took him some time—he had no sense of dura tion—to make the two words fit into the context of the moment. Charlie Thrush?
Then Burden asked, “Where did Thrush live?”
The past tense of the question hit Titus like a blow to the stomach. Suddenly he had no moisture at all in his mouth. “On a ranch west of Austin.”
“Where? Exactly.”
“Fredericksburg. Near there. ”He thought he was going to be sick.
“Rosha, ”Burden said, and the Mayan girl swiveled to another computer and began typing furiously.
Titus saw Charlie talking, his lanky frame sprawled in a chair in front of one of his computer screens, his long fingers flapping on the keys as if he were playing the piano, his head half turned as he talked, explaining the theory behind the calculus and the quantum mechanics on the screen. He saw him with his head buried in a book in a small pool of
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