Mark Stern leaned back in the car’s rear seat and tried to relax. The big Lincoln Town Car wove as best it could through the thickening afternoon traffic. The Long Island Expressway resembled a slowly moving parking lot. The driver was using every trick he knew to get down the road more quickly. It wasn’t enough for the frazzled venture capitalist.

Stern leaned forward and growled, “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

The driver had been listening to these complaints ever since Stern flagged him down and hopped into his car in front of the Plaza Hotel. It didn’t matter to the driver if the stiff wore a thousand-dollar suit and promised a fifty-buck tip if he got him to JFK in thirty minutes. No reason for the son of a bitch to behave like that.

“Listen, bud, we goin’ as fast as we’s can,” the driver said in his thick Bronx accent. “I ain’t losin’ my license for youse or anybody else. Youse don’t like how I’m drivin’, get your ass out an’ walk to da friggin’ airport.”

A lane opened for a few feet. The Lincoln shot toward it, only to grind to a halt again when that space closed up.

Stern sat back again and tried to relax. He didn’t know why he was in such a hurry. There was still plenty of time. The flight didn’t leave for a couple of hours. It looked as if he had made a clean getaway.

Stan Miller’s call had caught him off guard. He reported that Andretti was in custody and singing like a bird. Telling all the world about the great caper he had set up for Mark Stern.

Stern had not expected Andretti to fold so easily. In retrospect, he wondered why he had ever been so naive. The man was nothing but a sniveling drunk. There was no reason to think the fat slob would have even an ounce of backbone. But the CTO had held the keys to the kingdom. There had been no choice.

Miller was already on the run. He called from a pay phone somewhere on the New York Thruway. He was headed for Canada. The SEC deputy director told Stern that the feds would be on his tail as well, and very soon. Andretti had made certain of that. He had better run while he had a chance. Otherwise, he was looking at some very nasty jail time.

Stern managed to find a first-class seat on a Varig flight, nonstop to Rio. That would do for the first leg. Once he was safely hidden in Rio, he could plan what to do next. It was a big globe with lots of places to hide if one had the money to do so.