The Plan

The smoke from the flash crash grenade was still looming in the air as the former CEO of America’s Bank, Edward Lewis III, listened intently to the masked man in front of him. His vision was just coming back to him but the ringing in his ears continued and he struggled to listen.

He started to cry again but was brought back to the seriousness of his predicament with a sharp open hand smack to his face.

“Pay attention!” the leader of his masked assailants said to him sternly. The tall assaulter again reiterated that he would not be harmed if he did exactly as he was told, “fuck up and you’re a dead man.”  He believed him.

He fired up his secure computer and logged into his personal bank account. He’d wired this kind of money before and knew that it wouldn’t trip any security algorithms, and guessed these men knew the same.   Five million dollars was wired to an offshore account in Hong Kong.

After his bank received billions from the U.S. government the board gave him a nice bonus, more money than most could spend in two lifetimes.  He wondered, “Why do these men only want five million dollars when they could take ten times that amount? Why not take it all?”

Then he knew the brilliance of their plan.

If he didn’t care about the amount of money, then he had every reason to keep this embarrassing episode to himself, why risk his life going to the authorities.  “If you tell anyone about the specifics of this incident you’ll wish we killed you tonight,” said the tall assaulter.  Edward believed every word he said, the man’s eyes were hard and serious, a kind of look that can’t be faked.