Conquistador by S. M. Stirling Page B

accounts—most of them—but RM and M looks like a genuine business. Solid. Lots of assets, lots of employees. Lots of profits, too—according to this, their costs per ounce are half the industry average.”
    â€œNo reason they couldn’t be bent and have a legit side,” Tully said dubiously.
    Tom grunted and read, skimming with the ease of someone who’d been flipping through reports most of his adult life. Rolfe Mining and Minerals Inc. Founded by John Rolfe in 1946, and he’d been born in Virginia in 1922; apparently a real connection to the Pocahontas people. He scanned quickly down the article, but found no picture of the man.
    â€œNo visuals?” he said, looking up at Tully.
    â€œNothing,” his partner replied. “Not in the back files of the newspapers, not in the society magazines, and not anywhere on the Web. Interesting, isn’t it, for someone with that much money? I’ve got a request pending with the Pentagon—there might be something from WWII.”
    â€œIt is interesting,” Tom said cautiously: Tully had a tendency to leap to convictions. “But it’s not illegal. By lots of money, you mean lots of money, I presume?”
    â€œRead on, Kemosabe. Tonto think it maybe too quiet there.”
    Rolfe had a fairly impressive service record; commissioned out of VMI at twenty in ’42, service with the Ninety-sixth Infantry in the Pacific, Purple Heart and field promotion on Letye, another Purple, a Silver Star and a serious wound on Okinawa, which was why he hadn’t ended the war as a major at least.
    Then the move to San Francisco, like so many veterans who’d shipped out through the Bay Area during the Great Unpleasantness. His company had gotten big fast in the postwar boom, diversifying in the sixties into real estate, banking and insurance, but staying a closely held private corporation; no more than the minimum SEC information. That meant no real idea of what they were worth, but it had to be immense, just from the publicly acknowledged holdings—a corporate headquarters in the San Francisco financial district, and a huge warehouse complex in Oakland. There were also offshore operations, theoretically independent: the Caymans, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bermuda, which hinted at massive assets moved out of country for tax purposes, plus mining properties in Africa and Asia and odd corners of South America. And those odd subsidiaries, which didn’t fit at all.
    â€œI’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Tom said, crossing an ankle over his knee and considering the documents in his lap. “A bad feeling that our promising lead is evaporating.”
    â€œYeah, it smells funny,” Tully said, fishing for cigarettes inside his jacket and then popping a stick of gum into his mouth instead. “There was what, maybe ten, fifteen million worth of stuff in that warehouse?”
    â€œ ’Bout that.” Tom nodded.
    â€œWhich is petite larceny to this crowd,” Tully replied. “Cappuccino money.”
    â€œYeah. People that rich don’t do crime—not below the bribe-the-dictator-of-Corruptistan level when they need a pipeline concession. Hell, even the Italians went respectable when they made their pile. That’s the way it works; you get into organized crime, make a bundle, and your kids or grandkids invest it and get out. Hell on a stick, RM and M is old money now by Californian standards. I’d expect them to be living off capital gains and making donations to worthy causes, maybe the third generation becoming art collectors or painters or living in cabins in the north woods.”
    â€œThe Bad Things could be happening at a lower level,” Tully said. “Someone in this ratfuck of corporations, rather than the top management themselves. But the condor did pass through Oakland, RM and M does have that big facility there, and we did find the Bosco Holdings stationary in the