This guy is clueless, I think. Or else he’s betting that Paul won’t make it through this meeting alive.
“Can’t believe she ever delivered a kid,” says Dr. Lacey. “She’s still high and tight. I’d like to give that a workout.”
Paul cuts his eyes at Lacey, marking him down for future attention.
“Point is, Paulie,” says Russo, “you don’t know what the hell she’s been up to, or how much of a threat she is to us.”
“I think it’s time we heard from the lady herself,” says Buckman.
Holland rips off the duct tape. Jet yelps, then raises her hand to slap Holland, but he easily catches her arm.
She looks down at Buckman, her arm still locked in Holland’s grasp. “You’d better tell him to let go, Claude. Because you are well and truly fucked already. And this is making it worse, I promise you.”
Buckman assesses her with a practiced eye. “Let her go, Beau.”
She focuses on the old banker, and in her eyes I see implacable fury. “You threaten my child? You kidnap me by force, when you could have just invited me here? What the hell were you thinking?”
“Business is business, dear.”
“You’re the one here to answer questions,” says Holland. “Not us.”
“Why is our son here?” Paul asks in a barely controlled voice.
“To ensure that your wife tells us the truth,” Buckman replies, nodding to Holland once more.
Holland works the remote, and the video of Jet is replaced by an image of Kevin Matheson pacing a small bedroom, while Tallulah Williams sits at the end of a bed, looking frightened.
“You’re saying you’d torture my son?” Paul asks, his eyes on Buckman, then Blake Donnelly, who looks away in shame.
“We didn’t create this situation,” says Buckman. “And I don’t think it will come to that. But I’m very concerned about what your wife just said.”
“You should be, you dried-up bag of bones,” Jet says. “What I said is you’re fucked. Screwed. Dead meat. Either you put us back in that chopper and fly us home, or the FBI will be kicking down your door by eight a.m. Every one of you. Federal prison. Bank on it.”
“Bullshit,” says Holland, clearly discomfited by her bravado. “She’s bluffing.”
Jet regards him with regal disdain. “Beau, you shouldn’t think. You’re not good at it. Selling time-share condos in Gulf Shores . . . that’s your ceiling.”
Holland laughs. “Big talk for an Ole Miss grad.”
“You think? I figure my IQ surpassed yours when I was about ten.” She looks around the semicircle. “Make no mistake, gentlemen. Each and every one of you has a sword hanging over your head. Sally Matheson put it there. You want to know if I have a copy of the cache? You bet your wrinkled old balls I do.”
She’s bluffing, I think. She has to be—
“She’s lying,” insists Holland. “She never had it. If Sally was going to give it to her, why bother giving it to Nadine, too?”
“That I can’t tell you,” Jet replies, still radiating supreme confidence. “But I can tell you this: Royal Bank of Seychelles, account number three-seven-six, six-eight-one-five, two-two-seven. That ring any bells for you boys?”
At least six men have gone bone white. Several sit up in their chairs as though a psychic has started reading their credit card numbers on television.
“Is that a yes?” Jet asks in a game-show host’s voice. “Anybody need a Valium? Maybe a little nitro under the tongue? You will. Because here’s the important thing: I don’t just know that information. I’ve set up an automatic trigger to release it in the event that I go missing or die. That’s my personal insurance policy. I set it up months ago, when I targeted Max. You put a bullet in my head tonight? You touch my child? You’re paying a deposit on your prison cell.”
She looks from face to face without a shred of fear. “And you,” she says, poking Holland in the chest, exactly the way she did Paul’s an hour ago. “You will get down on your knees and beg me not to feed you to the FBI.”
Holland gapes at her in astonishment.
“I said kneel, bitch,” Jet repeats.
Holland looks from face to face, gauging his support. “You don’t really believe her? Nobody would memorize account numbers.”
Jet sighs as though bored with this game. “I don’t have to memorize them, Beau. They just stick in my head. For example: CDB Offshore Bank of Seychelles. Account nine-three-six, seven-two-nine-nine, one-six-four-three.”
Gasped obscenities burst from the semicircle of chairs.
Jet smiles with satisfaction. “Aaaand the Prince’s Trust Bank, Seychelles. Account one-one-six, eight-five-one-seven, two-two-nine-six. Anyone . . . ? Bueller? No?”
One man comes up out of his chair.
“There,” Jet croons. “I believe Arthur Pine just wet his diaper.”
I’ve never seen anyone turn the tables on a group of powerful men so fast. It’s as though Jet took hold of the corner of a killing box and flipped it inside out with a single jerk. Suddenly she’s protected, and everyone else is facing destruction.
She steps away from Holland as if to get some distance from a bad smell. “As you mentioned, Claude, I am an attorney. And I happen to know that the penalties for tax evasion and criminal fraud amount to a life sentence for most of the men under this pavilion. My little insurance policy also contains copies of emails between Max and officials of Azure Dragon Paper, which will prove conclusively the selling of U.S. Senate votes. I’m not sure what the Justice Department does to you for that. I’d call it treason. But that’s only the beginning. I suspect the stock value of Wyatt Cash’s company would drop ninety percent by market close Monday.” She turns to Cash. “Say goodbye to this island, Wyatt. Also to your helicopter, which is nice, by the way.”
“Okay, hold up,” Cash says. “This is getting out of hand. It wasn’t my idea to kidnap this lady’s kid. Paul, you’ve got to take my word for that.”
“You flew them here in your helicopter.”
“Claude told me you wanted them here! Tell him, Claude.”
“Your stock’s going to take a hell of a beating, too, Claude,” Jet goes on. “Selling out your country to the Chinese? You’ll be off the board of your own bank in forty-eight hours.”
“Goddamn it,” Holland says. “Everybody’s losing their nerve.”
“Agreed,” says Russo. “She may have some of this cache, or she may just have a set of balls. I know some tough women gamblers. I don’t plan to spend the rest of my days living in fear of what this lady might do. I think she’s bluffing. And I call. Let’s tie her to a tree and spend fifteen minutes finding out exactly what we have to worry about.”
“I second that motion,” says Warren Lacey.
Somebody in the semicircle whoops in anticipation.
Buckman and Donnelly share a glance. They don’t look happy with the turn things have taken. Buckman looks over at Pine. “Arthur?”
The old lawyer runs his hand through his silver hair and regards Jet critically. “Jet Matheson isn’t my favorite person. But she’s smarter than any two of us put together. On the other hand, if her life over the past year has proved anything, it’s that she’s a consummate liar. I think the only way to find out whether she’s bluffing is to do what Tommy suggested—as much as I detest that kind of thing.”