Authors: E.J. Simon
She quickly exited Mariko, the upscale costume jewelry boutique on Madison Avenue, and stood outside the shop’s door, half-watching the passing pedestrians as she listened to voice she least wanted to hear.
“Samantha, this is Sindy Steele. You’ve been ignoring my calls. I understand, and know this is awkward for you, but we need to speak. Don’t ask any questions now. Please, just trust me. How close are you to the Surrey Hotel?”
Samantha’s mind raced as she thought of the possible scenarios behind Steele’s plea. None of them were good. “What do you mean? What’s this about?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you over the phone. You need to meet me. Now. Please. There’s a bar in the Surrey, Bar Pleiades.”
Further annoyed that Steele would be familiar with a place that she and Michael had often visited, she nevertheless continued, “I know it well, of course. I’m just a few blocks away, but it’s late and I plan on heading home.” Her voice turned stern, “What is this about? And where is Michael? Why are
you
calling
me
?”
“Samantha, I’m calling you because I know something very personal about you that you don’t want Michael to know. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Meet me in ten minutes in the bar. Good-bye.” Steele didn’t wait for an answer. The call had ended.
Although curious as to why Steele would try to reach her, Samantha had ignored her earlier call. There was no reason she would ever need to speak with her husband’s mistress, especially now that she was sure Michael was about to eliminate her from their lives. So why, she wondered, did she take this call today? Was she unsure of Michael’s resolve—or was she just curious?
And what could Steele possibly know about her that she wouldn’t want Michael to know? There was only one secret she had kept from Michael—and other than Angie, the only other person who knew about it had jumped to his death in Paris.
Regardless, she headed to the Surrey Hotel.
Chapter 61
New York City
S
indy Steele could feel the Zen-like calm that was the Bar Pleiades.
The room had a sophisticated Coco-Chanel-inspired décor: subdued colors, smooth black lacquered cocktail tables, red velvet upholstered chairs, and vintage black and white fashion photographs on tan quilted fabric-covered walls. It was, she thought, an elegant setting for the opening scene of a murder.
They sat at their banquette facing each other, the wife and the mistress. She wondered if Samantha was thinking the same thing.
“Thanks so much for meeting me. I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked to see you.”
Samantha took a large sip of her drink, “Yes, I must admit, I didn’t expect you to call me.”
“Well. I apologize for the intrigue. But I have a surprise for you.” She thought—fleetingly—of the Glock in her purse.
“Well, you got me here and, despite my better judgment, I’m listening. This week has already been horrendous. How much worse can it get?”
“Yes, Michael told me about the whole thing with that man, Rizzo. I guess if there’s one consolation, it’s that he won’t bother you or anyone else ever again.”
Samantha took a long sip of her drink, stared straight back at her and said, “I know you’re sleeping with Michael.”
That didn’t take long, she thought. Sindy tried to anticipate the direction of their conversation as a chess player thinks through the likely sequence of moves. Samantha’s quick move surprised her. Nevertheless, she was sticking to her plan. She had to wait for the opportune moment, when Samantha’s attention would be sufficiently diverted, to drop the capsule in her drink, the first but irreversible step. Their conversation had turned combative quickly; she knew she’d have to make her move soon or risk having Samantha leaving abruptly.
She wasn’t used to losing the initiative. This was her meeting, she thought, not Samantha’s. To slow down the pace, she’d agree with her.
“You’re right about that.”
Samantha began to speak but, Steele cut her off. “Before you get all offended or hurt or moralistic on me, you need to know something.”
“I don’t need to know
anything
.” Samantha shot back. “Your ‘affair,’ or whatever you want to call it, is over.”
“Really? I guess you know something that I don’t since I just left him last night.” She noticed a well-concealed expression of surprise. “But, let me ask you something.” She paused. “Aren’t you curious what it is that I know about you? After all, that’s why you came, isn’t it?”
It stopped Samantha in her tracks. Her head, no longer leaning in, tilted back.
“What secret could you possibly know about me?
Sindy paused, then paused even longer until even she was uncomfortable.
“Tell me, do you miss Bertrand Rosen?”
She knew she struck gold. It was clear Samantha was rattled.
Samantha took a deep breath, “I beg your pardon?”
“I saw you there.”
Samantha looked like a deer in the headlights. She reached again for her drink, her hand shaking, the huge diamond on her finger reflecting the candlelight from the table.
“My life’s none of your business. It isn’t now and it never will be. And, as long as I choose to be married to Michael, I’ll control a good deal of his life. Don’t let the last few months fool you. If you think Michael will turn his back on me, you don’t know him. Sometimes, frankly, he just thinks too much, but when push comes to shove, you won’t stand a chance.”
Samantha’s eyes were wandering, glancing around the intimate room at the other patrons. She was avoiding Sindy’s glare.
Sindy knew that it was time. She slowly placed her hand under the table and found the soft brown leather of her Coach bag that was resting between her thighs. She reached inside and gripped the sticky, gelatin capsules in her fingers.
Samantha’s face suddenly relaxed, as she rose up to greet a young couple who had just entered the bar from the lobby.
In one swift motion, Sindy rose slightly, moved the table out for Samantha—and dropped the capsules in her drink. A slight fizz briefly appeared before the head of the pale pink drink resumed its normal appearance. It was done.
It would take the pill ten minutes to bring Samantha to her knees. First, she’d feel light, followed by dizziness, then the room would begin spinning. She’d realize something was terribly wrong but would be unable to gain control over herself. Sindy would then offer to help her, while Samantha would wonder whether Sindy had drugged her. By that time, she’d be conscious but helpless. Sindy would help her out of the bar and into her car.
Samantha sat down and immediately finished her drink.
But Sindy’s eye caught a glimpse of a man entering the bar. She didn’t know him but she recognized him. Her mind quickly shuffled through a file of images, faces she had seen before and places she might have seen them. She realized that she had gone through this same rewind of people and places once before. It was the same face—and something about the eyes. A flash of recognition swept through her. She remembered where she’d seen him, twice before. She looked back at a tiring Samantha Nicholas and felt a sudden heaviness in the pit of her stomach. This man would change everything tonight.
Chapter 62
New York City
W
ith his distinguished profile, white hair, tailored three-piece suits, and a gold pocket watch, Hans Ulricht looked every inch the Swiss banker that he was. Born in Berlin, just before the Second World War, to an infamous Nazi, dark rumors swirled around him every step of his career.
His father, Friedrich, served as a Nazi leader and Minister of Armaments and Munitions in Hitler’s cabinet. Upon his arrest near the conclusion of the war, Friedrich Ulricht’s cooperated with the Allies and claimed to have been surprised that he was arrested. At the Nuremburg trials, he acknowledged the scope of the Nazi atrocities, while denying he had any knowledge of them until after the war. However, the charismatic Ulricht took responsibility as a senior officer of the Third Reich for the horrors. That slender ethical thread—taking responsibility while denying prior awareness of the crimes—spared him the fate of ten of his contemporaries—execution by hanging.
Hans remembered the constant whispers that followed him, with his mother in the local shops or entering a new school. At first, when he understood that his father was in Spandau prison, he was ashamed. But, as he entered his late teens, his feelings changed. The constant flow of letters from his father instilled in him a deep sense of German patriotism and pride. Those who considered Frederick Ulricht a war criminal were misinformed.
He remembered greeting him on the day he was released from Spandau in 1966, after serving his twenty-year sentence. Hans was then twenty-six, his father, sixty-three. In the years that followed, Hans grew close to his father and eventually learned the truth about his knowledge and complicity in the Nazi atrocities. Yet Hans still considered him to be a war hero.
Hans himself was in the twilight of his career at the International Bank of Switzerland, a senior director and managing partner of the firm. His father had died in 1981; despite his notoriety, his connections within the elite of post-war Germany had assured Hans of entry into the inner sanctums of the richest circles. Now seventy, Ulricht brought billions of euros annually into the treasury of IBS, most of it well hidden behind walls of discretion and secrecy that has defined Swiss banking for centuries.
As he sat in Jonathan Goldstein’s office at Cartan headquarters, Ulricht wondered how Goldstein would have fared at the hands of his father’s Nazi machine. Not very well, he suspected. But this was a new world and a different time. The Goldsteins of this world once again controlled money. The Nazis’ work went unfinished. It was Hans Ulricht’s fate to have to cater to the likes of Jonathan Goldstein, just as he had accommodated the peculiar personality of Bertrand Rosen. Sitting with his father forty years ago, he didn’t imagine that Jews would again exert such dominance over financial matters. But his father also taught him about the need for discretion in his utterances and the necessity of keeping his ethnic prejudices to himself. Hans Ulricht was always, despite his inherited, deep-seated arrogance, polite and politically proper.
Just as he knew that those attributes had served him well, he also knew that discretion and good manners were not the virtues anyone would attribute to his client, Jonathan Goldstein.
“The fact that you chose to invest my money in Rosen’s funds is your fucking problem, Hans.” Ulricht watched as Goldstein bellowed from his desk, his eyes flaring. “I expect to be made whole.”
“But, Jonathan, you know as well as I do that IBS does not guarantee the risk, particularly when you have us invest in outside funds, such as Mr. Rosen’s. We are separate entities. This was your choice. IBS can’t be held responsible for the problems with an outside manager.”
Goldstein’s face turned red, his eyes narrowed their glare onto Ulrich. “Fuck you. I don’t get screwed. I do the screwing. I don’t let anyone walk over me. Least of all some old Nazi.”
It was at this point that Ulricht exercised the ultimate self-restraint, remembering his father’s advice to keep certain areas of his life out of the realm of any discussion, acknowledgement or, worse, outward anger. But Goldstein continued his rant. “And I don’t give a shit about your fucking Swiss discretion. You and Rosen were in bed together. You know it. You introduced me to him. You and your bank made millions in fees off my investments with him. You had a fucking fiduciary obligation to vet his funds and his operations. You didn’t do your job. IBS screwed up. Now you go back to your fucking neutral little country and figure out how you’re going to replenish my money.”
Ulricht planned on quietly holding his ground, if he could, without further enflaming his client. “Jonathan, I’m not sure there is anything I can do. This is most unfortunate, I agree and I understand your displeasure—”
“Displeasure?’ This is more than displeasure. Cut the diplomatic shit, Hans. You need to think real hard. I’ll bury you and your fucking bank before I’m going to lose four-hundred million dollars. Do you understand? You and IBS have a lot at stake. The regulators and federal investigators will be all over this. They’ll be analyzing and questioning every trade. They’ll be looking for where you got your information. And not just regarding Rosen. They’ll be looking at every deal, every trade you’ve ever done, even investments that have nothing to do with Rosen. They’ll analyze your relationship with everyone you’ve ever spoken to—” Goldstein paused, as though he wondered whether to continue.
Ulricht watched him, surprised by his hesitation. But, either satisfied it was safe to continue or unable to suppress his impulse, Goldstein dropped his nuclear nugget, “and that includes your British friend, John Hightower.”
Ulricht was stunned to hear Goldstein mention Hightower. He didn’t think that Goldstein was even aware of their relationship. Hightower had just been arrested and was sitting in a downtown jail frantically trying to raise bail after his assets were frozen by the authorities. Hightower was a tidal wave of vulnerability for Ulricht and IBS. His late-night phone calls and “inside” information on the Cartan-Gibraltar merger made IBS and several of its clients three million euros in just a few days. As a result, Hans Ulricht feared he was already a doomed man. It was just a matter of time before Hightower would talk. If the wiretaps and trading pattern analyses hadn’t already implicated Ulricht and IBS, Hightower would. He was only surprised that Goldstein knew about it.
“Jonathan, I can assure you, whatever trouble Mr. Hightower has gotten himself into has nothing to do with IBS—”
“Not just IBS, Hans. Not just IBS.
You. You
, Hans. Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of money whore because I’m willing to bet that next year this time, you’ll be clinging to whatever little money you’ve got left that your attorneys haven’t taken—or the government hasn’t found yet—and praying to your god that you don’t have to finish your fucking life in some prison cell serving wiener schnitzel to a bunch of ungrateful rapists who’ll own you like you’ve never been owned before.”