Chapter 17: Upper Management

Present Day

Days 28 - 39

Arlington, Virginia

It was time to raise the stakes with Balustre. It was one thing to take out secretaries and clerks, the equivalent of collateral damage as far as Bart Jackson was concerned. He was sorry they had died but at some point they must have seen what kind of firm they were working for. He had far fewer qualms about the mid-level analysts and specialists who had died; they not only knew what the company did, they actively aided and abetted it. Still, he and Janice wouldn’t be free of Balustre until he took the entire place down, or otherwise forced it out of business.

It was time for a different approach. While he didn’t have access to the internal Balustre Group scheduling program, he did have access to their emails, and an interesting one came across his screen. Frederick Mills, Corporate Counsel and registered lobbyist for the Balustre Group, confirmed his Wednesday luncheon at Morton’s with three other men. Two were senators on the Armed Services Committee and the third was a fellow lobbyist from a firm on K Street.

From there it was off to the lab. It was too public a setting to walk up to Mills over his niçoise salad and squirt poison-laden DMSO onto him, and it wasn’t like he could pre-select the chair he would sit at and get him that way. Neither could he manage to get close enough to break his neck without being seen. All Balustre Group senior employees were now being driven to and from work in armored limousines - another Balustre product - and being escorted by Balustre security personnel. No, he would have to take a different approach.

Frederick Mills kept looking around nervously as he left Balustre. He walked directly to the limousine and climbed inside, followed immediately by the security specialist assigned to him. As Corporate Counsel he only rated a single bodyguard, unlike Harold Blackstone, the Chairman of the Board, who rated three bodyguards, or the division chiefs who rated two. That pissed him off immensely!

“How safe is this thing?” he asked, referring to the limo.

“We checked it this morning and it tested clean for DMSO. Since then, it hasn’t been left unattended. We’re safe,” he was told.

Mills grumbled and tried not to touch anything. When they got to Morton’s he waited until the bodyguard motioned for him to exit the vehicle. As he walked into the restaurant, he let the bodyguard open the door and then tried not to touch anything, all the while looking around. He didn’t relax until he sat down. He had wanted a private dining room, but one of the senators had blocked that; he wanted to be seen by another lobbyist from a firm competing with Balustre. The bodyguard took a position several feet away at a different table.

Neither noticed the tall and stocky blonde who walked past. She was dressed in a blue pants suit and a crisp white blouse, and as she walked past the table, she stumbled. She grabbed for the back of Frederick Mills’ chair as she regained her balance, and then she kept going, heading for the ladies’ room. Several minutes later she went back the way she came, this time not losing her balance, and stopped at the front desk. “Thank you, but I just got a message that the person I’m meeting is at the Arlington restaurant. I feel so stupid!” she said in a low, raspy voice.

“Please, madame, it happens all the time. Can I call you a taxi?”

“I have my own ride but thank you.” She smiled and left the restaurant.

Bart Jackson drove back to the Hyatt and let himself into his room. He kicked off the low heels and stripped off the pants suit and the prosthetic bra. Then he went into the bathroom and took a shower, working hard to strip off the makeup he had worn. It had been years since he had impersonated a woman, that not being one of his personal kinks. It was an iffy disguise for him in any case, due to his height and heavy beard, but it could be very useful when people were looking for a heavily bearded man. To remove his beard, he had both shaved and used a beard removal cream. The blonde hair was courtesy of an expensive wig.

Then he took a plastic bag out of an interior pocket of the pants suit. Inside was a large ring with a large bezel. The bezel could flip open, exposing a tiny needle. When used properly, the wearer could twist the ring so the bezel was on the inside of the hand, flip the bezel open, and then surreptitiously touch somebody with the needle. Then the bezel could be closed. Done skillfully, the second person would never even know what had happened.

Bart Jackson was very skillful. He was aided by the fact that the human body had different concentrations of nerve endings per square inch. The lips, feet, and hands had the highest level. The upper back, between the shoulder blades where Jackson had pushed the needle through Mills’ suit as he stumbled in the restaurant, had one of the lowest concentrations of nerve endings. Mills never felt the botulinum toxin-laden microneedle enter his back.

Botulinum toxin was well known to most people due to the ever-present commercials for Botox. Botox was an extremely dilute solution of one of the most lethal poisons ever discovered. It was so dangerous because it caused muscle paralysis. In Botox, the muscles were those that caused wrinkles in facial muscles. In higher doses, it could lead to weakness in the facial muscles, drooping of the eyelids, disruption of the autonomic nervous system, and finally heart arrhythmia and respiratory failure. The level of toxin needed was in the nanogram level, invisible to the naked eye. To kill somebody with Botox would have taken multiple vials of Botox and intravenous injection. The needle had been dipped in a much higher concentration of the toxin.

Frederick Mills didn’t react immediately to the toxin, but only because the injection was subcutaneous, just entering the skin, and not deeper, as intramuscular or intravenous injections. Still, it was more than sufficient to be fatal. It took several minutes before anybody noticed that his eyelids were drooping, and he was drooling slightly at which point the other lobbyist asked Mills if he was feeling alright. Mills turned to him with a blank look and tried to answer but couldn’t get anything out. He then slumped in the chair and vomited up his salad. There were gasps from the surrounding tables and his bodyguard rushed over. An ambulance was summoned, and he was transported to George Washington University Hospital but by the time botulism was suspected, he was already in severe distress and on a ventilator. Even though they started an antitoxin regimen, it was a fifty-fifty shot whether he would die or end up living on a ventilator for the next few months. He died that evening.

Jackson took an instant epoxy tube and squirted it into the plastic bag with the ring. He worked it around the ring and tossed it in the garbage. It would harden to the point the ring would be unusable. Then he packaged up the women’s clothing and dressed like a man again. It was time for an early dinner.

Charles Conway was unaware of what had happened to Frederick Mills when he took the place of Terence O’Neil’s driver. Since Jake Kilbourne, or whatever name he was using, was so fond of poisons, Conway decided to imitate his kills. That evening, as Terence O’Neil got into his limousine, Conway stuck him with a syringe of cyanide-laden saline solution. Within seconds O’Neil began shaking from seizures. Almost immediately thereafter he stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest.

Charles Conway drove the head of the Executive Action division to the hospital, claiming that he had collapsed after getting into the car. “Sorry, that’s all I know. Man, I am not going anywhere near that place in the future!”

When the police came to question him, the driver had already left the hospital. Conway wouldn’t learn about Mills until the following morning, when he got a text message from Swan ordering him to meet at a local Jersey Mike’s ASAP.

The demise of Frederick Mills was the last straw as far as the FBI was concerned. The death of Balustre’s chief lawyer and lobbyist while eating with two influential senators was not something that could be ignored. A team of agents showed up at the corporate headquarters the next morning along with a Deputy Assistant Attorney General from the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. That was considered a bit of overkill, but he happened to be in Washington and there wasn’t any travel involved. Regardless, without Mills there to delay things, they breezed into the office and began waving badges and subpoenas around.

There weren’t a lot of people to impress. The remaining employees were more afraid of the group attacking them than they were of the FBI. Additionally, there weren’t that many remaining people to question. Mills was gone, O’Neil, the head of the Executive Action division was dead, and Swan, his deputy, was out of the office. Harold Blackstone was in Europe on a sudden trip to review international business. Every other senior manager was also missing, mostly travelling back to wherever their divisions were located.

Then came the next bombshell. Jason Bulkely, the head of the Corrections division, was found dead, murdered in his office. For once, it didn’t appear to be the handiwork of the mysterious murderer who was poisoning everybody at Balustre’s corporate headquarters. In Bulkely’s case, the killer was his secretary. Anybody who ever met the man could speak to his overbearing nature and crudity, and the increasing stress in recent weeks had made him even worse. After threatening her once too often, she had grabbed a large glass pyramid he had received at an award ceremony and hit him with it. That had stunned him enough to allow her to hit him with it a second time, dropping him to the floor. She continued smashing it into his head until her strength gave out. That was how security found them, him on the floor with a crushed skull and blood everywhere, and her covered in blood, still holding the cracked and broken glass award.

The FBI put in a request that Blackstone return to Virginia so he could assist with the investigation. Blackstone ducked the request, though his secretary was allowed to tell the Bureau investigators that he would be back the following Thursday for a board meeting and would be happy to meet with them at that time. Meanwhile, he was travelling overseas and was out of touch. The FBI was not impressed and ordered in a computer team and began serving subpoenas.

Bart Jackson let himself into his room at the Hyatt Regency and walked to the window, but halfway to the window he realized he had just made a fatal mistake. One of the armchairs around the dinette table was missing. He began to turn around and move his right hand towards his shoulder holster when he heard the words, “Don’t move, Mister Kilbourne. Stay very, very still.”

Jake froze in position. “Are we going to talk like this?”

“When I say to move, turn to your right very slowly. If you think that you can reach into your jacket and grab your pistol, you might be right, but I can guarantee that I can pull my trigger before you ever reach yours. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Now, turn slowly to the right.”

Kilbourne turned to the right slowly, keeping his hands in the same position. For whatever reason, the person behind him wanted to talk rather than simply kill him. When he finished the turn, he was facing a man sitting in the missing armchair and pointing a Glock 22 at him. “Hello.”

“Hello. My name is Charles Conway, and I have been searching for you for over a year, Mister Kilbourne. You are extremely talented.”

For all the politeness of Conway, his pistol was still aimed at Kilbourne’s midsection. “If you found me, you are quite talented, too,” said Jake.

Conway made a slight wry smile and nodded almost imperceptibly. “Do me a small favor and button your jacket. Slowly.”

“Button it?”

“If you decide to be foolish, that will buy me enough time to put a second bullet into you.”

“Ah!” Jake buttoned his suit coat from top to bottom, and then put his hands to his sides. “Now what?”

“Now we talk. By the way, I have already secured your other weapons. I assume the weapon you are carrying is a match for the Beretta I discovered...” Jake nodded, and Conway continued, “ ... but an M-21? Very enterprising, but a trifle overkill, don’t you think?”

“I prepared for all eventualities. What are we doing here? Why am I still alive?” he asked.

“What are we doing? We are negotiating.”

That stumped Jake. “Negotiating? About what?”

“About your future employment with the Balustre Group.”

Jake stared as if he was looking at a mad man. After a moment he asked, “You want me to go back to work for you? After I’ve been working at decapitating Balustre?”

Conway gave a larger smile at that. “Yes, the one is contingent on the other, so to speak.”

Jake rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “May I sit down?” He cocked his head towards the bed.

“Move slowly and carefully. Not on the bed, but you can pull one of the chairs closer. Use a foot.” He used his left hand to point to a chair and a location to move it to; his right hand continued pointing his Glock at Kilbourne.

Jake kept an eye on Conway as he moved an armchair to where Conway pointed, and then slowly sat down. He placed his hands on his knees. “How did you find me?”

“With considerable difficulty. Obviously.” He smiled at that, and then said, “Once we realized what was happening, we began scouring every possible camera we could find. At the lawyer’s office, at headquarters, at just about every hotel and motel in the area, at banks and businesses - everywhere! It took supercomputer levels of processing power and artificial intelligence to match your various personas. Eventually, well, here we are.”

“And what makes you think I will go back to work for Balustre?” Jake asked.

“Miss Northcott can be made available to ensure your cooperation,” replied Conway.

Jake sat back in the chair and contemplated trying for his weapon, regardless of his captor’s pistol. “Explain,” he said flatly.