65
" concerned an exercise machine called the Alpine Ski, a magnificently designed device that simulates downhill skiing, giving the user not only the aerobic benefits you get from something like the NordicTrack, but at the same time, a serious muscular workout. The Alpine Ski’s inventor, Herb Schell, was my client. A former personal trainer in Hollywood, he had made a bundle with this invention. Then suddenly, about a year ago, cheaply produced ads began to run on late-night television for something called the Scandinavian Skier, unmistakably a knockoff of Herb’s invention. It was a lot less expensive, too: whereas the real Alpine Ski sells for upward of six hundred dollars (and Alpine Ski Gold for over a thousand), the Scandinavian Skier was going for $129.99. Herb Schell was already seated in my office, along with the president and chief executive officer of E-Z Fit, the company that was manufacturing Scandinavian Skier, Arthur Sommer; and his attorney, a high-powered lawyer named Stephen Lyons, whom I’d heard of but never met. On some level I found it ironic that both Herb Schell and Arthur Sommer were paunchy and visibly in lousy shape. Herb had confided to me over lunch shortly after we met that, now that he was no longer a personal trainer, he’d grown tired of working out all the time; he much preferred liposuction. "
― Joseph Finder , Extraordinary Powers
66
" EVERYONE WHO served in the Iraq war knew the stories about the missing American cash. Not long after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the U.S. government secretly flew twelve billion dollars in cash to Baghdad. I know it’s hard to believe, and it sounds like it was made up by one of those wacko left-wing conspiracy-obsessed blogs on the Internet. But it’s a matter of documented fact. Twelve billion dollars in U.S. banknotes was trucked from the Federal Reserve Bank in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where it was put on pallets and loaded on C-130 military transport planes and flown to Baghdad. The idea, I guess, was that this was the only way to pay our contractors working in Iraq and run the puppet government: in stacks of Benjamins. Baghdad was awash in crisp new American banknotes. Gunnysacks full of cash sat around, unguarded, in Iraqi ministry offices. Bureaucrats and soldiers played football with bricks of hundred-dollar bills. And here’s the best part: Somehow, nine billion dollars just disappeared. Vanished. Without a trace. "
― Joseph Finder , Vanished (Nick Heller, #1)
68
" concerned an exercise machine called the Alpine Ski, a magnificently designed device that simulates downhill skiing, giving the user not only the aerobic benefits you get from something like the NordicTrack, but at the same time, a serious muscular workout. The Alpine Ski’s inventor, Herb Schell, was my client. A former personal trainer in Hollywood, he had made a bundle with this invention. Then suddenly, about a year ago, cheaply produced ads began to run on late-night television for something called the Scandinavian Skier, unmistakably a knockoff of Herb’s invention. It was a lot less expensive, too: whereas the real Alpine Ski sells for upward of six hundred dollars (and Alpine Ski Gold for over a thousand), the Scandinavian Skier was going for $129.99. "
― Joseph Finder , Extraordinary Powers
72
" The guy standing behind him—cute, dark-haired, the innocent face of a boy and the body of a linebacker—looked barely thirty. “How’s it going?” he said, smiling, and she couldn’t help smiling back. They each took out leather badge holders and flipped them open. She saw only a flash of gold, a glint of silver. The older one sat slowly, gingerly, on the only chair, as if he had a bad back. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Heller?” His partner went scrounging for another chair from somewhere beyond the blue curtains, the boundaries of her world. "
― Joseph Finder , Vanished (Nick Heller, #1)
80
" The most I could do was to mull over several different hypotheses. Think them through, turn them over and over and try to calculate which one was the most likely. What I eventually settled on was something like this: my ever-scheming, ever-dissatisfied, megalomaniacal brother had finally discovered a way out of his middle-class purgatory. After his company, Gifford Industries, had secretly acquired Paladin Worldwide, he’d combed through Paladin’s financial records, come across evidence of some mammoth kickback scheme, and made the brazen error of trying to extort millions of dollars from Carl Koblenz, Paladin’s president. But instead of simply buying Roger’s silence, Paladin had come right back at him. Threatened him. Targeted him. Then, one night in Georgetown, grabbed him. After that, well, my hypothesis got even shakier. Had he managed to escape his abductors? That seemed awfully unlikely. Roger was no super-hero. Was he being held prisoner at the Paladin training facility in Georgia in such a lax, loose way that he was actually able to use a cell phone? That was only marginally more likely. "
― Joseph Finder , Vanished (Nick Heller, #1)