Page 160 of The Session

“I’m not currently under investigation by you or anybody else as far as I know,” said Mark, “so what do I have to lose?”

He could see a flicker of a grin on Laurent’s face at the naivete of his statement.

“Your father had an Interpol Red Notice. And you helped him stay ahead of it,” said Diane.

“Others would argue we were trying to escape from the gunmen that tried to kill him and who showed up suspiciously at the same time as you got Bahamian authorities to issue the arrest warrant,” countered Mark.

“You’re speaking about this alleged shoot-out that the Bahamian authorities say never took place,” Laurent remarked.

Mark looked at him. “You can ask them why one of their police boats is in a thousand pieces on a cay where they tried to shoot us out of the water.”

“Given your father’s reputation for exaggeration and storytelling, it sounds more like a narrative meant to shift blame,” Laurent observed.

“Do you think I made it up?” Mark asked Diane directly.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but it’s not relevant to our case. Your father is guilty of both bribery and selling arms to recognized enemies of the United States and France.”

“You have a manufactured paper trail created by his advisor who sought to take control of the company by any means necessary,” asserted Mark.

“Once our extradition request goes through, we’ll be happy to sort this out in a court in Paris,” Laurent responded.

“All that’s going to accomplish is embarrassing you when the details come out about the extent to which Nathan Morris lied to you,” countered Mark.

“Nathan Morris may be many things, but he never struck me as stupid,” Laurent said. “Why do you think he would try to frame your father only to have it fall apart in court?”

Mark pulled Kevin’s phone from his pocket and set it on the table in front of them.

“There was a kid, working in the It department at Summit. He was very dedicated. He had a learning disability when he was younger, and a teacher gave him some of my father’s books. He said it changed his life, and he decided that he wanted to work for Summit. Like many, he quickly realized Summit is a very complex place, not unlike other large organizations with many different agendas and egos. He discovered that not everybody had Summit’s best interests in mind and began compiling information, whistleblower-style, to present to a responsible authority figure there. The problem was he couldn’t find such a person. Finally, he reached out to the one man who had been the kindest to him, and that was my half brother, Kevin Lightman,” Mark explained.

“David McCready,” said Diane with a curt nod.

“You used David’s death as an excuse to explain why you were looking into Summit,” Mark said.

“Yes, it was another suspicious pattern.”

“But you didn’t seem all that dedicated to getting to the bottom of it,” Mark observed. “Why is that?”

“We realized the drug overdose was plausible,” said Diane.

“And why was that?” asked Mark.

“That’s not your concern,” Laurent cut in.

“I think it’s a concern to all of us. Diane?” Mark said.

“We spoke with a rehab facility,” she stated. “One of their doctors explained that Kevin was privately trying to treat his addiction and he had kept it from his family.”

“Did you bother looking to see who owned that facility?” Mark inquired.

“Summit?” asked Laurent.

“No. EuroLogix. Safid Al-Rashid’s company. Nathan Morris’s partner,” Mark replied. “The same company that owns the plane that brought the gunmen to the Bahamas to kill my father, and the same company that owns the plane that brought Nathan Morris to Eleuthera the day he spoke to Kevin. The same company that put my face on bounty posters in Haiti,” Mark concluded.

Diane turned sharply to Laurent.

“Is this true?” she questioned.

Laurent’s cheeks begin to redden. “This is a very complicated case. There are a lot of different companies and shells involved.”