The offices of Montgomery Investment Services occupied the entire fortieth floor of the Prudential building in lower Manhattan, and once Christopher smelled corruption, he didn’t care how many chances he took. Late at night, after the cleaning crew was gone, he entered his father’s office and searched through his computer. He did the same to each of the partners. What took the feds two years to uncover, Christopher had learned in two weeks. Montgomery Investment Services was dirty as sin, and Christopher’s name and brainpower was behind nearly every deal that had been made.
As quickly as he pieced together the fraud, Christopher also figured out that he would be considered as guilty as anyone else at the firm. His digital fingerprints were on nearly every trade. He would be implicated in the Ponzi scheme as much as his father or any of the partners. Implicated, prosecuted, indicted, and imprisoned. And the feds were coming, he knew. An old friend with whom he had studied applied mathematics worked for the IRS and had confirmed Christopher’s suspicions. Christopher asked for a favor, and his friend obliged. While Christopher spent two weeks unraveling the financial crimes at Montgomery Investment Services, his friend made a few calls and did some snooping of his own. The friend didn’t know much, he told Christopher, but he had learned that there was an active investigation going on that involved the FBI’s Math Geeks—the nickname used for the forensic accountants who worked for the government. His friend had even managed to get the name of the operation: House of Cards.
There were many choices Christopher Montgomery could have made. He could have gone to the feds and cut a deal. He could provide all the access they needed. He could have been a siphon to it all. He could have confronted his father and demanded that things change, but he knew things were too far gone. He could have attempted to erase his fingerprints from the trades and plead ignorance. But each of those choices had flaws. Attached to all of them was the likelihood that he would go to prison. So, instead, he had told Claire about their father’s hedge fund and the fraud and the billions in assets that were nothing but a mirage. He told her how he was neck deep in it all, even though until recently he knew nothing about any of it. Then, he had asked for her help.
There was no perfect way to fake your own death. But he had been adamant that he needed to do it before the feds busted down the doors. Because to fake your death after an indictment was too suspicious. To fake your death a year before anyone at Montgomery Investment Services came under federal indictment was possible. If they did it the right way.
Sacrificing her Oyster 625 took some convincing, but after Christopher explained that the boat—and everything else in their lives—had come from dirty money, Claire had agreed. Knowing that the marina had surveillance cameras, he and Claire had climbed aboard the Claire-Voyance, prepared the boat for a sail, and pushed off. It was only after they were a mile offshore that Christopher boarded the dingy and made it back to land—a different marina where surveillance was less severe. Then, he had prayed that Claire would survive.
The storm was as brutal as forecasted, and Christopher did his best to keep track of the news as he drove. It was sixteen hours from Manhattan to Sister Bay, Wisconsin, and Christopher stopped only for gas. When he did, he kept his sunglasses on his face and his ball cap pulled low over his eyes. By the time he reached Connie Clarkson’s sailing camp it was six in the morning and the sun was rising. When he opened the door to cabin 12 he was met with the smell of fresh brewed coffee and pancakes, and said a silent prayer of thanks that he had Connie in his life. He clicked on the news and ate like a wild animal.
His biggest regret—even greater than asking Claire to sacrifice the Oyster 625, and risk her life for him—was that the money Connie Clarkson had given his father for safekeeping was gone. Like many of his father’s victims, Connie Clarkson was blind to the fraud until she learned the cold, hard truth that any money given to Montgomery Investment Services had disappeared like smoke in the wind.
It was noon before Christopher found the story on CNN’s Web page. A sailboat had sunk off the coast of Manhattan during a violent storm. One passenger, a woman, had been rescued by the Coast Guard. A search and rescue operation had been launched for a second passenger.
Up to that point, things had worked. He had planned to hide at Connie’s for a couple of weeks. He never imagined it would take three years to leave cabin 12 and the sailing camp.
CHAPTER 77
Westmoreland, Jamaica Friday, October 29, 2021
THE PORT OF SAVANNA-LA-MAR WAS A THIRTY-MINUTE DRIVE FROM Negril. Avery sat in the front seat as Walt drove the Land Cruiser toward the ocean. A week earlier Walt had accepted receipt of the sailboat at the small marina there. The slip had been rented for a month, paid in full and in advance. It only took three days to spin through the checklist of repairs the boat needed after making the long journey from Sister Bay. Over the last three days they stocked the vessel with nonperishable food, water, and everything else someone might need to spend weeks on the water.
Christopher’s goal was to disappear for a year to make sure no one was looking for him. By then they would be certain that his escape had, indeed, been flawless. The only worry was that their father, facing the rest of his life in jail, might mention to the feds that he believed his son was still alive. Neither Christopher nor Avery believed that their father knew the truth. Still, it was safest for Christopher to take to the sea while their father was prosecuted. There was no telling the extremes he might go to to lessen his sentence. That his own daughter had betrayed him and turned him over to the feds was surely a bitter pill Garth Montgomery would not swallow easily. But it had been part of the long game Avery concocted the moment her father’s postcard arrived in the mail. The final details had come together with Walt’s help. The best way, Walt had told her, to make sure the eyes of the FBI were off the airports, borders, and ports was to divert the agency’s attention. And the apprehension of one of their highest targets was the best way to do it.
In a year, when the coast was clear, the plan was for Christopher to return to Jamaica and start his new life. His job at Hampden Estates distillery would be waiting for him, and there were worse ways to spend time as a free man. Holed up in a cabin in Sister Bay, Wisconsin, working at Connie Clarkson’s sailing camp had been a temporary arrangement that had run far past its course of practicality. Here in Jamaica, Christopher Montgomery—aka Aaron Holland—could truly be free.
Avery stared through the windshield as Walt pulled into the marina’s parking lot. The masts of other sailboats poked into the sky, but she recognized Christopher’s boat immediately. Avery led the way with Walt and Christopher following. She walked down the dock and stopped when she came to the stern of the boat. The name was printed in cursive, and Avery was thrilled with how it turned out. Connie had done a spectacular job.
She felt Christopher’s arm wrap around her shoulder.
“I’ve told you before, but I just want to make sure you know how grateful I am for everything you’ve done,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’ll pay you back somehow.”
“No you won’t.”
He smiled. “Probably not.”
“But when things calm down, you can show me the Caribbean on this gorgeous boat.”