Storm Front

When he was sure he was alone, he pulled in at a travel plaza off the New York State Thruway. Now he was sitting in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts, sipping coffee, being nervously eyed by an Indian woman in a sari who was trying to stop her two children from staring at him. He needed a plan. And he needed help. He knew that.

But what plan would work? He had no experience at being on the run. Nor did he have any background in having his life threatened.

And who would help him? Barry, his chief of security at Prime Resource Investment Group, was a retired cop but, obviously, something of a moron. The man had allowed Whitely’s house, car, and office — and who knows what else — to have the bejesus bugged out of them and had been completely unaware the whole time.

He thought about calling Teddy Sniff, his trusted accountant. But what would Teddy do? Order an audit on Volkov? Make him reconcile his accounts? Teddy would be every bit as unfamiliar with this new terrain as Whitely.

The coffee had run out. He went to get a refill, wondering as he used his black American Express card whether Volkov would somehow have a way of tracing it, and whether therefore this would be the most deadly cup of coffee he ever drank. He was in the midst of pouring his second pack of sugar into the brew when suddenly the idea hit him:

That guy from the CIA. What was his name? Cloud? No, that wasn’t right. Rain? No, that was the dumbest name for an action hero Whitely had ever heard of.

Storm. That was it. Derrick Storm. The CIA had to help him, right? He was a taxpayer. And even if he was a taxpayer who paid an effective rate below 15 percent, he was still an American citizen. Storm would be obligated, wouldn’t he?

Whitely pulled out his phone, found the name on his contact list, and was about to hit send when he remembered what Storm had instructed him: No calls from his cell phone. Someone would be listening.

Storm said he should find “a pay phone in the middle of nowhere.” Upstate New York surely qualified as nowhere. So Whitely started wandering around the rest area, looking for a pay phone, praying they even still existed. Who used pay phones anymore? Whitely hadn’t touched one in well over a decade. When he found a small bank of them, he realized he no longer had any idea how to make one work. He no longer had a calling card — that was so quaint, so nineties. He actually needed… change? That was also antiquated. Whitely had gone cashless years earlier.

It took finding an ATM machine, pulling out cash, buying a donut, and asking for change in quarters before he had some.

Finally, he was ready. He dropped in four quarters and dialed.

“Storm Investigations,” he heard.

“Mr. Storm, thank God. This is Whitely Cracker.”

There was a pause, followed by a terse “Yes. And?”

“You said if I became fearful for my life I should call you. Well, I’m fearful for my life.”

Another pause. “And why is that?”

“I know this is going to sound crazy. But there’s a… Jeez, I don’t even know what to call him. I guess you would call him a… a hired thug. He’s Russian, and…”

“Gregor Volkov,” Storm said, just to speed the conversation along.

“You know about him?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you probably know I…”

He faltered.

“I…” He tried again.

“I’ve made a… Oh, God, what have I done?”

The weight of it finally hit him. The damage he had caused. The lives that had been shattered. The lives that were now in jeopardy. It had started as a kind of play on his part — just one big investment gambit, nothing more — and it had gone so incredibly wrong.

It was all crashing down on him, all at once. And that was when Graham Whitely Cracker V — mover of billions, master of the universe, scion of the Cracker fortune — started crying.

It was not a small cry. His face had crumpled. His shoulders heaved. He was making this noise that sounded more animal than human, and he knew he must have looked both terrifying and stupid, but he couldn’t stop himself. He just leaked tears and snot all over that pay-phone handset and blubbered nonsensical snippets of sentences.

Storm let him carry on. He didn’t feel the least shred of pity for Cracker. Storm was more ready to kill Cracker than he was to comfort him. It was all he could do not to hang up the phone at this feeble exhibition, which was as much self-pity as anything.

When he could listen to it no more, Storm finally said, “Mr. Cracker, get ahold of yourself.”

Cracker bawled some more, apologizing all the while, but finally started saying things Storm could actually parse.

“Volkov… Volkov turned on me…. He’s told me he’s going to kill my family if I don’t cooperate…. Oh, God…”

“Cooperate with what, Mr. Cracker?”