Читать книгу The Fixer - John Stewart - Страница 9

Chapter 4

The Problem

Henry Sutter transferred a hundred thousand dollars to the account of the United Front Against Politics, UFAP, for the third time. They were his favorite group for bringing violence to any protest that was happening. They had a radical group of followers that never seemed to care about bloodshed for no reason.

Henry hated the United States and, in particular, its latest president. He had grown up poor in London. His mother had left him on the streets there at age six. He never saw her again. He never knew who his father was. He snuck his way onto a cargo ship coming to America when he was eight. In New York, he was scooped up by children and family services and found himself in an orphanage a week later. He was in the system, and he hated it.

The orphanage was small, and he still felt as poor as he was on the streets of London. All the money this country had and he was wearing rags for clothes. Barely had anything to eat and he felt like he was in prison. At ten he was adopted by a wealthy couple that couldn’t have kids. The first year was great. Henry saw how the wealthy lived. His new parents tried to buy his love. Henry had everything he ever wanted.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Henry’s rebellious nature came back, and he began to lash out. First it was at his new mom and then the dad. Henry was a big kid for eleven, and he used that to strike fear into his new parents. He would break things and shove his mother when she tried to stop him. Over the next year the relationship became so hard that eventually Henry was sent to military school.

Henry actually found this refreshing, and he did well there. The discipline and structure gave Henry the drive and inner strength he needed to thrive. He rose to the top of his class and graduated with honors. He then went on to West Point and enjoyed that as well. In his senior year, he was talking to several branches of the military, trying to decide where he would serve.

One week from his graduation, a man showed up at the school. He was his parents’ butler. Henry at age twenty-two had just inherited a billion-dollar company and hundreds of millions of dollars from his adoptive parents he barely knew. They had been killed in a plane crash, and Henry was the sole inheritor per the will. He barely knew them and had hardly kept in touch. He had gone home for the occasional Christmas over the years or birthday, but mostly he had stayed away. They had paid for all his schooling and had sent him money every month, but beyond that, they were basically strangers.

Henry found himself strangely upset over their death. He got emotional standing there in the courtyard of his dorm, talking to a man he didn’t even know about parents he didn’t know. The man reached out and took Henry’s shoulder in his hand to comfort him.

Henry stepped away quickly, causing the man’s hand to fall away. “Don’t touch me. You don’t know me.”

The man withdrew. “I’m sorry, sir. I was just trying to comfort you in your loss.”

Henry put on his uniform hat he had been holding. Squared the hat to his brow and looked at the man. “I have school to finish. When I am done, I will come and deal with this.”

The man took another step back. “Yes, sir. I will have a car here for you after graduation.”

Henry turned and walked away. He spent the next week in a haze. Bombed most of his last finals but graduated still in the top 10 percent of his class. He hung his uniform in the closet and walked away. He didn’t take one thing from his dorm room. His roommate came in expecting to find Henry so they could go out and party. Henry had left everything, including his class ring, sitting on his desk.

Henry found himself that next day in upstate New York in a mansion, alone again. No parents and no one that loved him. He had been alone his whole life. He assumed he always would. He spent the next week with attorneys finding that all that he had just inherited would be taxed at an insane amount. The money his parents had worked for all their life was being confiscated by the US Treasury Department. The billion-dollar business was being siphoned off as well and would hurt the operating capitol due to these same inheritance taxes. Henry grew angrier by the minute. His hate for the United States had begun.

The next ten years of Henry’s life were spent understanding and submerging himself in his father’s business. Surprisingly, Henry was good at it. The business was shipping, and in the back of Henry’s mind, he couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that the very ship he snuck to America on was probably owned by the company he now ran. Henry was reminded every year at tax time how much the treasury department had taken from him and continued to as a large business. Millions of dollars for what? He had seen the wealthy politicians get rich while children starved on the streets of this so-called great country. Millions spent on wars that did nothing to help anyone.

He found himself over the years donating money to multiple orphanages and then eventually several anti-government hate groups. He wanted to see serious changes to the way the United States used the money they took from its citizens. Now in his forties he had become bitter. His anger for the government had grown, and he was waging his own war against the elite Washington, DC, crowd. He viewed them all as arrogant and full of themselves. Power mongers that needed to be taken down.

The first donation to a terrorist group was an accident by Henry. The group’s name was the Brotherhood of Freedom. Henry gave them ten thousand dollars assuming they were an antigovernment group. He later, after a few meetings with the leader, found out that in fact, the group was Muslim and had direct ties to Hezbollah. It wasn’t discovered until sometime later that the group had been linked to several car bombings and small terrorist acts.

Henry only paused briefly when he learned their true nature. He viewed it as attacks on what America stood for, not the harming of innocent people. Henry had grown to despise the wealthy upper echelon here in America. He had become somewhat of a recluse in his life. Working a hundred hours a week typically. He despised the political system, and over time, in his mind, he had determined the only fix was to bring the whole thing down to nothing.

He never wanted to be directly linked to a group that drew blood, but through various channels, he made sure certain groups were well funded. He had grown his father’s shipping company into a worldwide conglomerate with office in every major port. He saw his support for Hezbollah as a way to get access to the Middle East shipping needs without the risk of security problems. If a few men were smuggled in a returning ship here or there, who would know? If a crate was delivered with no shipping manifest, he turned his head and didn’t ask. Over the next twenty years, Henry was funding multiple terrorist groups.

His Hezbollah contacts had led to Al Qaeda and then ISIS. He was a true enemy of the United States. All the funds were washed and clean that ended up in the hands of these groups, so the United States never could quite prove anything. Through various interviews and social media events, Henry was well documented regarding his hate of the US government machine. He used his ties in the Middle East to make billions off the shipping that came from there. In Henry’s fleet were multiple oil tankers, and there was a constant flow of business leaving the ports in the region.

Henry also dropped fifty-five-gallon drums on the docks full of money that were then distributed to the various groups to help fund their cause. This also allowed Henry the freedom to travel anywhere in the world, including the Middle East virtually harm-free. Every group in every town over there knew Henry as the white deliverer of money, and they welcomed him like a king. Henry made trips multiple times a year and flew into one country or another and stayed at this palace or that palace. He ate their food and sampled the land’s finest offerings. He also began to develop a real taste for the women of that region.

Henry spoke multiple dialects of Arabic and enjoyed the culture. He ended up with a mansion in Pakistan and one on the coast of Libya. He also had a villa in Saudi Arabia. He threw elaborate parties at these homes and hosted both sheikhs and princes quite often.

In his late forties, he married the daughter of one of his business associates in Iran. He was forty-eight, and she was twenty. The man’s daughter was given to Henry as a token of appreciation for his financial support over the years. He married her there in a standard Iranian ceremony and then brought her to the States, where he married her legally in the United States. Henry never quit sleeping with the other women he knew in these areas and was open about it with his wife. She knew her place in the world and in Henry’s life. If she didn’t, she was quickly reminded every time Henry hit her and dared her to bring shame to her family back home. Her name was Ezra, and she was beautiful. Tall and slender with a round face and good body. Ezra kept to the traditional head scarf hijab but became more Americanized with her clothes once she got in the States.

Henry had threatened to kill her several times and put her body in an oil drum to ship her home if she ever crossed him in any way. At one point she became pregnant, which was against Henry’s rules. Henry had vowed he would never father a child in this evil world. Ezra hid it from Henry for a month until he noticed she had not had a menstrual cycle in some time. He questioned her, and she finally admitted it to him. He beat her so badly that she miscarried that next day. When she healed, Henry told her if she got pregnant again, he would kill her.

Ezra began to hate Henry and vowed to herself that one day she would be free of this monstrous man, even if that meant killing him herself. Ezra slowly began to hide money whenever she could. She had gotten citizenship with the marriage, and with the right help, she could leave him. The United States had laws—her country did not—that protected women from evil men. Her upbringing kept her afraid though, and she stayed and tried to please Henry any way she could.

Henry often brought other women home and into their bed, forcing Ezra to have sex with him and these other women. She did what he told her and kept putting money away every chance she could. She found that after these sex sessions, Henry would feel just slightly guilty, and she learned that if she asked for money to go shopping, he would give her hundreds of dollars at a time. She would go buy a dress or two and put fifty or so in her hiding place. He also sent her to buy gifts and jewelry for his other women, and she easily would put away a few hundred for herself during those shopping trips. In all, Ezra had stashed away almost fifty thousand dollars over the course of a few years. She didn’t even have to ask Henry for the money after sex any longer. He had gotten used to giving her something every time, and the harsher it was, the more he gave. Ezra had become numb to the things he asked her to do, knowing the money would come the next day, and she would one day disappear, leaving him to never return.

Henry suspected Ezra of stashing money, but he really didn’t care. He already knew if she ever left, he would find her and kill her immediately. What Henry didn’t know was that his treatment of Ezra would hurt him one day beyond anything he could imagine.

The first time the NSA approached Ezra was 2012. A bombing had taken place in a church, and the Brotherhood of Freedom claimed responsibility. The FBI questioned Henry at the house since he had donated some years before. Henry explained in detail that he gave millions of dollars away every year to many organizations. His onetime donation was stopped immediately once he discovered that the group was not what he thought. Of course, there was no other record of a donation to the group because Henry had learned who they were.

The agents asked to question his wife, but Henry threatened lawyers at that point, and they backed off. Henry explained that she knew nothing of his finances and would not be of any help. The NSA picked up the lead and approached Ezra a few weeks later.

At first, she wouldn’t talk or even consider giving them any kind of information about her husband. The agent gave her a number that she could call day or night. They offered protection if she gave them credible information. She took the number and told them to leave her alone. The agent was an Iranian woman, and something about her stuck with Ezra. She wanted to have freedom like this woman. She wanted to be American like this woman was.

A week later, Henry left for a business trip to the Middle East. He told Ezra that he may be bringing a new wife home and that she should prepare. That night she called the number on the card. Ezra was smart enough to buy a burner phone at the store, knowing Henry would be watching every move she made.

She made arrangements to meet the same lady at a dress shop in the dressing room. She needed to make sure that no one saw her talking to anyone, ever. Ezra had been around for most of the meetings her husband had at home. Serving coffee and tea as the men requested. She never heard them speaking of any plans, but she knew their faces. She told the agent to bring pictures of all the men.

The agent agreed, and they set a time. She told Ezra she would be in a blue dress with a hat on. She would have pictures of all the men they were trying to verify had met with her husband. Ezra agreed and the next day went out shopping.

At two, she went into the dress shop, and sure enough, the lady in the blue dress and hat was shopping in the store. The lady grabbed a dress off the rack and headed to the dressing room. Ezra quickly picked something as well and also headed for the dressing rooms.

The store clerk unlocked one of the dressing rooms, and Ezra went in. She just stood there, not knowing what to do. In a minute she heard a voice. “Ezra?”

Ezra jumped and began to panic. “Yes.”

The lady slid under the panel and stood up beside Ezra. She stuck out her hand and shook Ezra’s. “I am Bahar. Thank you for trusting me. I will make sure whatever you tell me remains a secret from your husband.”

Ezra began to cry. “He will kill me if he finds out. He has threatened me many times.”

Bahar took her shaking hands into hers. “We will not let that happen. If at any point you feel in danger, you call me, and we will come get you. You are an American citizen and deserve protection. Don’t worry.”

Ezra wiped away the tears. “Show me the pictures.”

Bahar took out a stack of pictures, and Ezra began to go through them. The fourth one in she recognized and stopped. She looked up at Behar.

Bahar pointed. “Him? You recognize him?”

Bahar took the photo and motioned for her to continue. Ezra kept flipping through the stack and pulled two more before she got to the end. Bahar told her to go home and not to put herself in danger. Now that they knew Henry had met with these men in their home, they would begin looking further into his businesses and where his money went. Bahar made sure Ezra knew to act normal and keep shopping. They would contact her later in a safe way.

Ezra took the dress and left the dressing room. She spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and thinking about what she had done. Thinking about what Henry would do if he caught her. She knew he would kill her for sure, but what terrified her was what he would do to her before that. He would beat her unmercifully and make her tell him every detail. She was thankful it would be days before he returned so she could calm herself.

Ezra got home that afternoon, and Henry met her at the front door. She jumped and screamed as she opened the door to him standing there. She dropped her bags and grabbed her chest in panic.

Henry bent down and tipped the bag over, spilling everything onto the floor. “Where have you been?”

Ezra looked down at the pile and then back into Henry’s eyes. “Shopping. I didn’t want to be home alone today. I was not happy that you were bringing another woman home with you.”

As she said it, she looked past Henry, expecting to see another woman stare back at her. She didn’t see anyone though.

Henry took the toe of his shoe and spread the stuff on the floor around. Looking at everything she had bought. “My plans changed. Apparently, I am being watched by the FBI, NSA, or some other agency with three letters in their name. Do you know anything about that?”

Ezra bent and began to pick up the items on the floor. “No, why would I. You scared the crap out of me, Henry. You could have called me and told me you were home. I would have come right home.”

“No one has approached you and asked you questions?”

“No. Just the FBI when they were here. I told them the same thing that I would tell anyone that asked. I know nothing about your business or where you go. I just know you did business with my father in Iran at some point. What would I tell them anyway? That you go overseas a lot. I am sure they know that already.”

Henry bent and took her chin in his hand. He squeezed fairly hard. “If they do, you tell them you want a lawyer. You will never answer any question for them. Do you understand?”

Ezra pulled away slightly without trying to be defiant. “Yes. I understand. I don’t know anything to tell them anyway.”

“You don’t know what you know. What you’ve seen. You never talk to anyone without telling me immediately.”

He grabbed her hair, yanking it back hard, snapping her head back so her face was pointed up. “Do you understand!”

Ezra grabbed her hair at the roots. “Yes. I understand.”

Henry let her go and stepped over the pile of stuff on the floor. He walked into the study and shut the door. Ezra picked her things up as she began to cry. She hated this man. She wanted to help the NSA, and she would with anything she could find out.

She knew Henry kept a ledger in his safe. If she could get to it, she would have enough info to put him away permanently. The problem was, the safe was in his study, and she didn’t have the combination. Besides, Henry never left the study or the house with the safe open. She had never seen it open, not even once.

His next trip away, she would go in there and see what she could find. She was going to work with the NSA and give them everything she could on this monster of a man. Ezra hated him, and now she knew for sure he was helping men he shouldn’t. She watched the news. The men in the pictures were suspected terrorists. They had been in that house. She had served them tea.

She had decided, even if it meant her own life, she would destroy Henry and everything he had built.