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He wasn’t certain about Huisman. Not that he was sure of anything at this point. Who the fuck was he supposed to believe? He was living in the moment when it came to Tasha, but he wasn’t going to do the same with Huisman or Ben. Listening to Huisman, Ben sounded like he wanted revenge.
Sometimes there were good reasons for revenge.
“I’ve been spending time with him,” the doctor replied. “That was the point of me coming down here. Oakley wanted to meet, and he tempted me with financing for a pet project of mine. Despite the rumors, I do not rule the Huisman Foundation with an iron fist, and my personal money is not limitless. I have some projects my board isn’t interested in funding, hence I’ve come out here. I would have spoken about them to you this weekend, Mr. Nash.”
Would have? “I thought that’s exactly what we were going to do. Are you worried Oakley will try again?”
“I know he will.” Huisman frowned and hesitated, as though he wasn’t sure he should say whatever he was going to say next.
“Dr. Huisman, did you have someone placed in Oakley’s organization?” Tasha asked. “Or did you start paying someone who was already there?”
A light flush stained Huisman’s handsome face. “I became worried about Oakley when I learned of Mr. Middleton’s convenient accident. I knew from briefly talking to him before that he would prefer to have Mr. Nash join us. I told him to simply invite who he liked.”
“I wouldn’t have come,” Dare admitted. “I wouldn’t have stepped on Lance’s toes like that. It was his territory. My father wouldn’t have asked me to go, either. He wanted Lance working with Oakley. It only changed when Lance died.”
“That was when you got suspicious?” Taggart asked.
“I suppose I was always suspicious,” Huisman admitted. “Oakley is a big personality. Maybe suspicious isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s concerned. I was concerned he would take over anything he touched. I was concerned if I allowed him to invest the way I wanted, that he would warp my projects. So I wanted some insight, and I was willing to pay for it. Oakley is a man of his class. He doesn’t even notice lower-level employees when they do their jobs. But he doesn’t pay them enough to keep them loyal. I bribed his housekeeper. I offered her payment for any information she could give me that might let me know whether or not I should allow Oakley to invest.”
Dare thought there was more to it, but he wanted to stick to the important facts. “And she told you he tried to kidnap me?”
“She informed me that she’d been instructed to get a guest room ready at Oakley’s hunting lodge. For the week of the conference. She thought it odd since she knew he planned to be at his penthouse here in Sydney and then in the Blue Mountains. The hunting lodge is a place he goes when he wants to be alone. It’s in the… She called it something. Yes, the bush. She called it a shack in the bush,” Huisman explained. “Very isolated. She also noted that he’d ordered his helicopter pilot to be on call all week despite the fact that he had nothing on his calendar that would have him leave Sydney.”
“All of that is circumstantial and easily explained away,” Taggart said.
“But his meeting with a man named Jeremy Kye was not,” Huisman countered. “I’m going to send you a file with all the information I’ve gathered. Once I was suspicious I worried it was me he might be after. I had a private investigator follow Oakley, and he caught him meeting with a known mob associate. Kye specializes in getting witnesses to change their testimony. His MO is usually to kidnap them and change their thinking via torture.”
“I’d like to read the reports,” Taggart agreed. “How did you find out about Tandy?”
“I have tapes of the conversation with Mr. Kye,” Huisman admitted. “They discuss what he wants from Tandy.”
“Why not go to the police?” Tasha asked.
Huisman sat back in his chair. “Because Oakley owns a good portion of the police and the politicians here. You’ll notice that they also speak around the subject, but I figured it out. I knew Benjamin was watching. I also know that he’s joined the CSIS. I know because they opened an investigation into me and my family’s foundation shortly after.”
“You say family,” Tasha began, “but you are the last Huisman. Your grandfather died a few years ago, and you never had brothers or sisters.”
“I was not blessed with siblings, and my few cousins are gone now, too, but the foundation is my family at this point.” Huisman sighed. “Once I considered Benjamin family, but that is over now, and I knew when he was here that there would be support from either CSIS or the CIA. You can imagine my relief when I learned it was Mr. Taggart and his team who were here. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I hope you will choose to act on the information I’ve gathered and save Mr. Nash. And perhaps many, many more. I chose to come to you because I believe the Agency will have more luck getting Australian intelligence and law enforcement to believe in the danger than I would.”
