The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  The man nodded. It was slightly more than a nod, almost a bow. McKee presented Grace with a card, white with a maple leaf on it: French on one side, English on the other.

  “We work with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Quebec Region.”

  Grace inspected the card.

  “We’re following up on a message we received from our friends at the National Archives, in Sainte-Foy.”

  The doorman leaned over his marble banquette and watched them.

  “Might you have an hour to chat with us, Ms. Elliott? Mr. Kovály? We’re not far away, near the Centre Bell.”

  Bradley Tebb did not look or dress or stand like a Bradley Tebb. Grace was no expert on Canadians, but she had lived in Montreal long enough to recognize when something was off. “We’re pretty busy, actually. Maybe we can set up an appointment, later this afternoon?”

  “Actually, Ms. Elliott, we’re rather pressed for time ourselves.” McKee swatted some of the melting snow from her black jacket. “We have a car waiting outside. I promise it won’t be more than an hour, transport included.”

  Grace switched to French. “It’s where exactly, your office?”

  “Not far at all,” said McKee, in French. “Two steps away.”

  Still, Bradley Tebb had said nothing. He led the way, walking sideways, his front arm out like a magician taking them to see the floating head. William and Grace walked behind Tebb and McKee followed. The car was a black Audi with tinted windows, its four-way flashers on.

  Grace stepped out from under the awning. The temperature had dropped further and the snow was flying sideways now in the wind. She pointed up into the blizzard. “Some weather, hey?”

  “Some weather.” Tebb nodded. “Yes.”

  Sherbrooke Street has two lanes of traffic running in each direction. The walk signal, to cross, was counting down from six. Grace grabbed William by the jacket, yanked him to the crosswalk, toward the Ritz-Carlton, and pulled him across the street. McKee and Tebb were young and athletic but by the time they began running after them the walk signal had counted down to two. Grace counted on them knowing that Montreal drivers were not to be toyed with. McKee shouted something but with the wind and the cars Grace could not hear it.

  The costumed valets of the Ritz-Carlton greeted them like royals. Grace turned to see the outlines of McKee and Tebb in the snow, their arms crossed by the Audi.

  “What’s happening?” Inside the white and gold lobby, William was so out of breath he could hardly speak. “Who are they?”

  “Canada’s intelligence service is called CSIS, but her French accent’s wrong, the card didn’t have braille on it, and the man, Bradley, even his English accent is wrong.”

  “So who are they?”

  “Watch them.”

  William went to one of the doors and looked out. “It’s hard to see. The car’s going…gone.”

  It was too noisy near the doors so Grace walked deeper into the lobby, under the chandeliers. It was not yet one in the afternoon and already it looked and felt like night had fallen. Grace called the number on McKee’s card.

  “That was very rash. What are you doing, Ms. Elliott?” On the phone, Roberta McKee no longer tried to conceal her Eastern European accent.

  “I know you’re not CSIS. Roberta McKee! What a stupid name.”

  “You are going to get yourselves into worse trouble.”

  “But we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  McKee whispered something to her partner—driving instructions. Grace could not understand the language they spoke but it sounded Russian.

  “Did you kill my cat?” she shouted. But it was too late. McKee had ended the call.

  William led Grace deeper into the middle of the Ritz-Carlton lobby, where no one could overhear them. “Russian spies,” he said, “Russian mafia. There’s no difference, I can tell you that. The FSB, the SVR, the GRU, they answer to the same institution as the gangs, to the same man, in fact: Aleksandr Mironov.”

  “What?” said Grace. “The president?”

  “That’s him, and he made them all. If those two are…Grace, they will just kill us. I feel terrible about Zip but I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Lose me?”

  “Look, we can’t call the police. We can’t call anyone. Believe me, nothing and no one can stop them. You think the FBI hasn’t tried?”

  A tall and off-puttingly handsome black man in a suit walked over and spoke quietly, his hand on William’s arm. “Monsieur, dame. Is everything all right? Can I help you in any way?”

  “No, monsieur.” Grace tried to match his politesse. “Thank you, infinitely.”

  “You’re guests of the Ritz-Carlton this evening?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Are you here for our afternoon tea service?”

  “No, monsieur.”

  The hotelier placed his hands together. “Can we not serve you in any way this afternoon? Secure a reservation at Maison Boulud? Call you a taxi perhaps?”

  “Everyone should be so polite about kicking people out.”

  The hotelier bowed and gestured toward the exit of the hotel.

  * * *

  —

  In the taxi on their way back to Saint-Christophe, neither of them spoke. Grace thought of her blind mother in Jason’s Febreze-scented guest room in Coral Springs, responding to the doorbell in the middle of the afternoon: smiling at Roberta McKee and Bradley Tebb.

  She asked the driver to go by the apartment and keep going a while, so she could check for cat assassins before going inside.

  Just as she was about to ask the driver to stop, the Audi from outside Straka’s building turned slowly onto Saint-Christophe. Grace stifled a scream with her hand, a scream of fear and rage and exhaustion. When she had first moved to Montreal, there had been an outbreak of cockroaches in her apartment. The landlord had to call an exterminator in the end, but for years she had a recurring dream where armies of cockroaches came up all of the drains at once and though she ran from room to room there was no way to stop them. They were too fast and too clever, too determined. There were too many of them.

  Enough of the scream leaked between her fingers that both William and the squat driver jumped in their seats.

  “Keep going,” said William.

  “Keep going,” Grace repeated in French.

  “Madame?”

  “Drive, please.”

  “Where?”

  “Straight. Just go. Go!”

  Roberta McKee and Bradley Tebb had stepped out of the Audi as it stopped in front of her apartment. Jean-Yves de Moulin was right. Now that they knew what she knew—whoever they were—no one was safe until her story was published. It could not wait until after the election.

  She had to see Elena, now.

  “You have your passport?”

  William looked into his computer bag. “I do. But my toiletries are—”

  “The airport, s’il vous plaît.”

  35

  LONDON, 1992

  The rebirth of Craig International began in a private dining room at the Connaught hotel in Mayfair. Elena was so nervous she could not think about food. She stared at the flickering candles on the table, now that the spring sun had set, while her husband looked out the window at Carlos Place. Anthony was nervous too, but Elena had never heard him admit it aloud and he did not now. Instead he adjusted his tie and touched his hair and sighed at his watch every thirty seconds. When their guests were officially fifteen minutes late, he stood up. “Nobody shows up late to a meeting with Anthony Craig in New York. No one.”

  This was entirely untrue. The mayor, who wanted to run again, had been forty minutes late for a dinner with them less than a week earlier.

  “Tony, sit down. We need them.”

  He did and slammed the table with his fist. The waiter arrived with a glass of pinot gris for Elena and a Diet Coke for her husband.

  “Your guests will be arriving soon, Mr. and Mrs. Craig?”

  “They g
oddamn well better be,” said Anthony.

  It was obviously far too much emotion for the waiter. “Very good, sir.”

  The walls in the dimly lit private room were white stone. A fire crackled in the hearth. Apart from the vast table they had set up with four chairs, the room had a couch, a coffee table, and a bar. Anthony slouched and scowled, looked at the passing cars, noting ruefully that they weren’t Craigs—Beemer, Beemer, Mercedes, Range Rover—and at his watch again.

  It had been Sergei’s idea to have the financiers arrive late, to establish dominance. He and Elena had been planning this evening for months, waiting until the last possible moment to set it up. Craig International’s creditors were beginning to call in their loans, and Anthony was sleeping poorly. The New York Times had run a story and now the tabloids were beginning to cover it: unpaid bills, legal challenges, the end of the eighties and the end of “American luxury.”

  If it were to succeed, this meeting would be Elena’s final act as Anthony Craig’s wife. After this, Sergei had promised her she could do what she wanted, within limits. They could work out a new arrangement. She could even divorce him.

  At 7:50 p.m. their guests arrived. “We apologize,” said a bald man in his fifties with an earring and thick, blue-framed glasses. He looked like a hairdresser, an Elton John collaborator, not a banker. “It was a very complicated day. It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Craig.” He extended his hand for a shake. “I am David Sapozhnik.”

  Anthony took his time uncrossing his arms. He said, quietly, “How you doing, David?”

  “I’ve been the one working with your team on the telephone, from Tel Aviv. This is my associate, Raphael Rivkin.”

  Rivkin was the one they had come to see. He was wearing a dark, conservative suit and black tie, and kept his hair neat. Based on the newspaper stories about him, Elena had expected someone virile and charismatic. He was quiet and so short that he seemed child-like, as he sat in the heavy oak chair across from Anthony.

  They finished shaking hands and exchanging manly greetings before turning their attention to Elena. Sapozhnik was courtly and expansive in his attention to her.

  Rivkin did not engage in small talk, which annoyed Anthony. It displeased him that Rivkin insisted on meeting halfway in London and it displeased him that Rivkin was a thirty-one-year-old billionaire.

  “I like your style, Raphael. I like it a lot. Back in New York, even here in London, young people dress like hobos. Grunge, they call it. Some of the new kids we’re hiring out of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Wharton. That’s my school, Wharton, the best. They graduate and come to work for us and it looks like they’re coming from prison—not the Ivy League. But you…you got the Craig look.”

  Rivkin looked for a moment at his bald business associate, blankly, and then back at Anthony. “Thank you.”

  “If things ever go south and you need a—”

  “We have gone through your proposal a number of times, Mr. Craig.”

  “Straight to business.” Anthony leaned into Elena, as though he were telling her a secret. “They say that about you people, that you don’t stand for nonsense. I like it. I like it a lot. I should do more business in Israel. Hell, we all should. The deal you got, you and some of the other boys in the Russian market? It’s legendary on Wall Street. Elena, you can buy a trillion-dollar oil company for ten bucks if you got the connections. You, Raphael, and your connections. You’re just a front guy, right? A boy, really. Who owns you?”

  Rivkin stared at him.

  “Back in America we gotta build from the ground up. That’s how I did it. You start with nothing, suck up to bankers, get a loan, secure it, pay it back with interest, build equity, take some risks, add value. It takes some time. Right, Elena?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now a boy like you can come to London and look like a real man of the world, a banker, a capitalist—not a young gangster, right? No offense, Raphael, I hope this isn’t offending you.”

  “As you say, Mr. Craig. Straight to business.” Rivkin looked to the man beside him, to Sapozhnik, and nodded.

  It was the older man’s turn to speak. “By any objective measure, Mr. Craig, the automotive side of Craig International is a failure.”

  “Only if you’re objectively a fuckhead.”

  “Mr. Craig. It has never turned a profit.”

  “We run a private family business. How can you say we haven’t turned a profit? Who are you? What’s your name again?”

  “David Sapozhnik.”

  “Now come on, David. I don’t look profitable to you?”

  “The debt you carry, Mr. Craig, is—”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Tell him, sweetheart. Have you ever suffered on account of the debt our beautiful company carries from time to time?”

  Elena did not want him to ruin this, for his ego to overwhelm his ability to think himself out of bankruptcy. “Tony, let’s listen to what Mr. Sapozhnik and Mr. Rivkin have to say.”

  The waiter arrived to take drink orders from Rivkin and Sapozhnik. Sapozhnik ordered for them both: two glasses of whatever Mrs. Craig was drinking.

  “I understand you will be joining us for dinner tonight.” The waiter turned his attention to the Russians. “I know you two gentlemen have just arrived but might I take this opportunity to—”

  Rivkin lifted his hand. “I will not be staying for dinner. My associate will stay.”

  “Yeah.” Anthony lifted his chin. “Same with us. We have another appointment for dinner tonight.”

  Elena sighed. Of course they had no other appointments.

  When the waiter was gone, Sapozhnik pulled a stapled report from his briefcase and placed it on the table. “We are prepared to extend this loan to you.”

  “To rescue you,” said Rivkin.

  Anthony spoke directly to Rivkin. “Listen, fucko. We don’t need rescuing. I’ve been speaking to Deutsche Bank, and if they offer better terms I’ll be happy to tell you and Space Oddity here to head on back to Tel Aviv.”

  “We know Deutsche Bank, Mr. Craig.” Rivkin leaned over the table, so close Elena could smell his sugary hair gel. “And we know they would not lend you a pfennig. Not without our backing. We are like parents, co-signing a loan for our untrustworthy son.”

  “Who is this prick?” Anthony turned to Elena. “Can you believe this? Has anyone ever talked to me like this?”

  Sapozhnik cleared his throat and placed his hands, palms down, on the table. “You may not like where Mustela Capital came from, Mr. Craig. But the fact is, we know our business.”

  “Well, you don’t know shit about my business.”

  Sapozhnik sighed. “We know you are in distress. We know your automobile business is a disaster.”

  Rivkin laughed. “The absolute worst.”

  “Let’s be as clear as we can be.” Sapozhnik spoke slowly and quietly. “You are on the path to bankruptcy, Mr. Craig, your businesses and you yourself—personally. Bankruptcy and humiliation. Given the numbers you sent us, which are, sad as they are, themselves terribly inflated, our offer will be better than any other you will receive. I can absolutely guarantee this. Let us not play for the sake of playing. Do you want to lose your family business? Mr. Craig?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Answer the question, you child,” said Rivkin.

  For the next silent minute, Elena watched Anthony transform from rage to resignation. Finally, he said, “No.”

  Sapozhnik reached for him, touched his wrist. “Do you want to fail publicly? Shame your daughter?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want it to grow, to expand around the world?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “Mr. Craig. Do you want to be the man you always hoped to be? The man I read about in your autobiography? The man you claim to be in the gossip columns?”

  “You’re not a billionaire,” said Rivkin. “That is absolute bullshit.”

  “Mr. Craig: we are not interested in your automotive bus
iness. We are not interested in your ball bearings.”

  “Then what are we doing here? Huh?” Anthony looked at Elena. “What is this?”

  “Your cars and your ball bearings, your bankrupt jewelry concern and private jet and sports and television businesses, your junk bond nonsense—these are not the products we want. Mr. Craig: you are the product. Just you. We are here tonight to give you everything you most want. Everything you most want to be.”

  “For a price.” Rivkin was smiling now, like a lion tamer as the crowd cheers.

  The waiter returned with the wine. Elena ordered another one and Anthony asked for another Diet Coke. His right hand was shaking. Elena had seen him angry in the past, but anger was a species of joy for him. This was different, and worse than she had imagined. She was worried he would get up and leave the hotel, walk through Grosvenor Square, and into oblivion.

  She knew she had to restore the evening. “Let’s say it does not matter how we came to be here. Mr. Rivkin, you have capital. We need capital. If we work together, Craig International can take Mustela Capital’s investment and build something magnificent with it. We understand your terms, though we do not like them. If these terms were to become public it would be bad for us, because of your associations.”

  Rivkin sipped his wine, then leaned over and rubbed Sapozhnik’s back. “This is fun, David.”

  “I am only being honest, as you have been. And you are correct, Mr. Sapozhnik, Mr. Rivkin. We have lost the power to negotiate.” Elena took her husband’s cool hand from his glass of Diet Coke and visibly squeezed it. “But you, a thirty-year-old Israeli tied to a corrupt government in Russia and who knows what else…”

  Rivkin laughed.

  “You are our only hope.”

  This time, the silence that hung over the table was better. Elena had filtered and improved it.

  “I think he’s thirty-one,” said Anthony after a while. He turned to Rivkin. “I read you’re thirty-one.”

  Sapozhnik lifted his glass. “To the future of Craig International.”

  What did they celebrate? Elena thought about it as she lay in bed upstairs two hours later, how her husband understood what he owed Raphael Rivkin, understood who Rivkin worked for and represented, and how he came to be a billionaire at thirty.