“You could go to jail for a long time for what you did.”
“I think we both know that won’t happen.” Julian glanced out the tinted windows at the crowds of tourists thronging the sidewalks on Fifth Avenue. He felt a million miles away from them. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. Next week you’re going to announce your candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.”
“But I haven’t decided yet. And it’s a bit late to—”
“I’ve decided.”
The senator’s mouth fell open but no sound emerged.
“Everyone knows that you’ve been on the fence for months. You’ve even put together an exploratory committee. No one will be the least bit surprised when you throw your hat in. The filing deadline for New Hampshire is next week. No signatures required, though you’ll need to put an organization together for later primaries, some of which do require signatures.”
“Why?” was all Lightstone could manage.
“I need a friend in the White House.”
“You can get the current occupant on the phone anytime you want.”
“I speak to Paul Nessin regularly.”
“Is this about taxes?”
“I can afford to pay taxes.”
“Then why?”
The Mercedes turned up Sixth Avenue, passing several skyscrapers that Julian had purchased during the last real estate slump. He’d packaged them into a real estate investment trust and sold shares to the public in an IPO two years ago, netting enough to purchase a dozen Vermeers for his gallery, if only there were any to be had. Lightstone had never met a tax cut he didn’t like, but the truth was, Julian had no problem with higher taxes, as long as they were directed at those who could afford to pay them. The antipathy of the super-rich to taxes never failed to amaze him. Those who could most easily afford to pay them were, in Julian’s experience, the most vehement about the need to lower them, sending wave after wave of beholden politicians to Washington to make sure their views were appreciated when tax bills came to a vote. In his heart he didn’t really care about tax policy one way or another, but it was certainly no dealbreaker as far as his support of Lightstone went.
“Are you even a Republican?”
“My affiliation is irrelevant.” The government was a lumbering, inefficient, antiquated bureaucracy. But he knew the private sector—and human nature—too well to have any illusions about what less government could do.
“I’ve already come out in favor of another tax cut and against reinstatement of the estate tax.”
“Don’t you mean the ‘death tax’?” Republicans were geniuses at branding. Few people thought of themselves as having, or inheriting, an estate. But everyone was going to die. “I don’t concern myself with events after my death.”
“Then why? Why put me through this?” His voice had taken on a whiny plaintiveness that was very unbecoming in the fifth or sixth most powerful man in the free world. “I’m chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. What possible interest could that have to you? Is there something about foreign policy that you’re after?”
A shiver of vulnerability made its way down Julian’s back. “Of course not,” he said quickly. “All you need to do is announce your candidacy next week.”
“You have no specific agenda?” He sounded almost hopeful.
“Nothing you need to know about right now.”
A shadow of fear crossed the senator’s face. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“For God’s sake, Harry. You pander to the money boys every day. Last week you agreed to support the energy bill only because it included a huge subsidy for a new shopping center outside of Pittsburgh. How much did the developer contribute to your reelection campaign last year?”
“But this…using video, entrapping me with…how did you know about…how did you pick…her?”
The Mercedes stopped in front of 14 West 57th Street.
“You’ll find there’s little that escapes my attention,” he said as he tapped Miguel’s shoulder. The driver took off the headphones.
“Take the senator to LaGuardia. The shuttle terminal.” He extended a hand and was mildly disappointed when the senator shook it. Weak men were more dangerous than strong ones, he’d always found. If you could control them, so could someone else. The senator’s wife, for example, was thought to call the shots on most matters of importance.
“I wish I knew what this was about,” the senator said.
“In good time, Harry. Now, I don’t want you to miss your plane…” He left the car and headed back to his office.
• • •
Zach Springer spent forty-five minutes following the Mercedes as it slowly cruised through midtown Manhattan, seemingly making turns at random, doubling back at times. Finally, it returned to 14 West 57th Street, where Julian Mellow got out and walked quickly into the building. The Mercedes pulled away with the senator still in the back, and Zach followed it to LaGuardia, where it stopped in front of the Delta terminal. The senator got out, looking far grimmer and more tired than even the prospect of flying commercial to Washington would normally engender.
Zach drove slowly back to Manhattan, fighting the letdown he always felt when his pursuit of Julian Mellow led, invariably, nowhere. Senator Lightstone had accepted a ride on Mellow’s jet. Assuming he reported the trip to the feds (and Zach would definitely follow up on this), he’d done nothing illegal. The fact that Mellow and Lightstone had met in the privacy of the Mercedes was promising, as was the fact that Mellow had left the meeting with a smile on his face while Lightstone had entered the US Airways terminal looking…well, terminal. Something was up. But none of that added up to a plausible justification for wasting half a day. He’d call that contact of Sarah’s principal as soon as he got home. But as long as he had another ten minutes in the car, he might as well be productive. He took out his phone and dialed the pilot’s number.
“Yeah, it’s Zach again. Did the senator happen to mention why he was coming to New York?”
He heard Charlie chuckle. “I’m just the lowly pilot, my friend.”
“Okay, I tried.”
“He seemed extremely agitated. The flight attendants said he jumped out of his seat the moment we turned off the seatbelt sign and got himself a vodka.”
“Did he make any calls?”
“Nope. But I did get one bit of information you might be interested in. That guy we flew out this morning, the one who never says much, never gives his name? Our flight attendant heard him ordering a car service on his cell in San Francisco after we landed. He gave his name as Billy Sandifer, had to shout to be heard and ended up spelling it twice.”
“Billy Sandifer.” The name was vaguely familiar to Zach, but he repeated it twice to make sure he didn’t forget.
Perhaps the day hadn’t been a complete waste after all.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Chapter 7
Sophie DuVal stopped just two feet in front of the menacingly large but bored-looking guard standing at the entrance to the Sacré-Cœur prison. At five nine she was a head shorter, but she forced herself to look confident even as the guard absently massaged one of the two pistols holstered to his belt. They spoke in French, the official language of Kamalia, which was once part of France’s sub-Saharan African empire.
“I am here to see André Mansard.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but I—”
“Then I cannot let you inside.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“How could I, when you have not introduced yourself?” he said with something of a leer.
Sophie looked up into the guard’s eyes. The motivations of people, native Kamalians like herself, who did the bidding of the government always mystified her. The guard, for instance. Did he take pleasure in denying her entry to the prison, where most of the inmates were held without trial by the fascist regime of President Boymond?
“I am Sophie DuVal, an attorney. My client is
André Mansard.” Two years ago Mansard was the minister of development for Kamalia. He’d been imprisoned for nearly two years without so much as a hearing. She was there to reassure him that she and others were still working to get him released. Reassurance was about all she had to offer him. “He has had no contact with the outside world since the coup.”
“Then how can you be his attorney?” One edge of his lip curled upward as his eyebrows arched. If he did recognize her, then he knew she was not an attorney. But the lie had seemed necessary to gain access.
“I have represented him for two years, first when he was in the government, later when he was in charge of the Front Populaire.”
“He has made life hard for Kamalians. First he pushed the old government for more freedoms—”
“How can there be too much freedom?” And what was she doing, having a political discussion with a prison guard?
“For Kamalians, there can be too much freedom.”
Two centuries of French colonial rule had given the Kamalians a massive inferiority complex. Freedom was for other people: Americans, Europeans, the more developed African nations that surrounded tiny Kamalia.
“Now we have no freedom,” she said. “Can you at least agree that there can be too little freedom?”
“You had the freedom to come here to talk to me. We are talking freely. In some countries women cannot even show their faces in public. Or their bodies.” He gave hers a leisurely perusal. She had dressed with deliberation that morning. She was not averse to using physical charms to get what she wanted, so long as it served the larger purpose. Today, that purpose was getting inside Sacré-Cœur to see André Mansard. Sometime soon she would use whatever modest gifts she had to help overthrow the repressive and illegitimate government of Laurent Boymond, known as “Le Père.”
“And if I am refused entry to this prison, to see a client? That will bring attention.”
“You can send a letter to the American newspapers.”
She’d sent innumerable letters, written dozens of articles. The United States government cared nothing about wrongfully imprisoned black people in central Africa, and the newspapers had long since stopped publishing her articles and letters. Kamalia was old news. She too was old news, a former model in New York and Paris, at nearly thirty-one getting too old for the runway…but perhaps not too old for the guard. She placed a hand on his upper arm. “Please, I just need to speak to my client.”
He flexed his biceps to demonstrate where true power lay.
“No one is permitted to enter without an appointment.”
She let her hand fall to her side. “Are you familiar with the May 25th Orphan’s Society?” So many children had been left without parents following the coup that an organization had been formed to ensure that the overflowing orphanages had sufficient food and blankets.
“Everyone knows of the Societé,” he said.
She opened the satchel that served as her purse and briefcase and took out her wallet. “Perhaps you could make a donation in the name of a loved one.” She handed him a hundred-franc bill, enough to buy food for him and his family for a month. He snatched the money and shoved it into his pants pocket. “I will see that it goes to a worthy cause.” The by-now familiar leer made her want to take the money back from him, but she calmly walked around him and into the prison.
Chapter 8
Zach heard Sarah enter the apartment. He checked his watch—five thirty—logged off the internet, and joined her in the small foyer of their apartment, arriving at the same time as a panting Guinevere, who always greeted Sarah’s arrival as an utterly unexpected, lifesaving event. Sarah was one of the fortunate few who managed to look lovelier as the day wore on, no matter what difficulties it brought. In Sarah’s case, this meant a roomful of third-graders, some very bright and demanding “enrichment,” others having trouble keeping up and demanding extra attention, the majority somewhere in the middle and at constant risk of getting lost in the public school shuffle.
“Hello, Miss Pearlman,” he said in a child’s singsong. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
fifteenShe smiled a touch wearily as she took off her jacket. “Did you bike today?”
“Nyack. Almost.” He saw a shadow of disappointment fall over her eyes.
“Did you call that contractor?”
“I left a message,” he lied. If she knew how he’d actually spent the day she’d probably leave the apartment and never return, and he wouldn’t blame her.
“I’m glad. You want a glass of wine?”
“Maybe later,” he said, thinking, as he often did when she returned from a long day at school, that his life, in contrast to hers, added nothing of substance to the world, or even to their own little corner of it. He pulled her toward him and kissed her briefly on the lips.
“You know what, Zach?”
“What?”
“You stink. Eau de bicycle.”
“Oh. I was about to wash off.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
They showered together and made slow, early-evening love, and all he could think of was how little it took to reassure her, how little he would need to do to become the man she wanted him to be—and how impossible that was for him. Later, she brought two glasses of white wine to the bed, which they sipped in comfortable silence.
“Do you know the name Billy Sandifer?” he asked after a while.
“Should I?”
“I Googled him. He was a fairly well-known radical in the nineties antiglobalization movement. Spent a bunch of years in jail for blowing up a building in Boston. Killed a night watchman.”
“And now?”
“He’s been catching rides on Julian Mellow’s private jet.”
“Oh, Zach.” She probably used a similar voice for eight-year-olds who misbehaved after repeated warnings.
“Why is an antibusiness radical flying around the country on Mellow’s plane?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Mellow is apolitical as far as I know. He gives money to both parties. It’s about influence and access, not ideology.”
“Why, Zach?”
“He’d support the devil if he thought he could nail a favorable antitrust ruling on one of his deals.”
“Zach!”
“I have to, Sarah.”
She left the room. He heard her call Guinevere to the kitchen for dinner. He drained his wine and fell back on his pillow. He’d worked for Mellow Partners for ten years, beginning right out of Wharton. He’d toiled for low wages in publishing for a while before heading to b-school in Philadelphia, and he’d planned to return to the media business in some managerial capacity, armed with a business degree. But then Mellow Partners offered him a salary that was three times what he’d earned in publishing, with the promise of even larger bonuses. He’d interviewed with Julian Mellow himself, who was just starting out on his own after walking away from a lucrative partnership at Goldman Sachs. Mellow had been laconic but memorable.
Why work in the media when you can own it? Why be an employee when you can be an owner?
He signed on. Over the next decade he’d been Julian’s trusted sidekick, helping to engineer buyouts of dozens of companies, including, as promised, several media concerns. He’d grown rich in the process, raking in seven-figure bonuses year after year. Every penny of which was gone.
“I just need to see this through,” he told Sarah in the kitchen, where she was assembling a salad for dinner. It looked to be a salad for one.
“See what through? What possible outcome can there be that would satisfy you? Julian Mellow is a horrible man, I get that.”
“He destroyed me.”
“No, he didn’t. You’re thirty-five, you’re healthy, and you’re in a great relationship, or you would be if only you could get over him.”
“I have no career.”
“No career in finance. There are other ways to make a living.”
“I can’t forgive him.”
“N
o one’s asking you to. You just need to move on. What do you think you can gain by tracking his every move?”
“He fucked up on the Finnegan deal and pinned it on me. He’s bound to fuck up somewhere else, only next time he won’t have me to take the fall.”
“He’s too rich to go down, Zach. Too well connected.”
“But he’s greedy for success. You have no idea how the need to end up on top drives him, even now. That’s why he bought those shares in Finnegan. He made a five-million-dollar profit. For a man like Mellow, that’s like ten bucks. He risked everything for ten bucks. He’ll do it again.”
Zach could talk easily about Mellow’s greed, and yet it still astounded him, how stupid the whole thing was. Mellow Partners had been in a fierce bidding war for Finnegan Industries, a Cleveland-based electronic components manufacturer. The company was 30 percent owned by the grandchildren of its founder, one of whom ran it, and had been underperforming its competitors for years—in short, perfect bait for Mellow, who routinely bought such companies, streamlined operations, then took them public at stupendous profit. But the potential profits in acquiring Finnegan had been a bit too obvious, and several private equity firms and leveraged buyout shops had bid its price up. Julian abhorred losing even more than he loved making money, and when he heard through his vast web of contacts that a new entrant in the bidding war was going to make an offer at least 10 percent above his highest and final offer, he publicly announced that he was backing down and then purchased call options on Finnegan through a numbered account. The new entrant’s offer tripled the value of those options overnight, netting Mellow a five-million-dollar profit. When the SEC came calling, he produced a document showing that Zach had purchased the options, not him—for his own account. Zach never understood how Julian had been able to forge his signature on those trade confirmations, but what had really mystified him, and still did, was how a man who had been like a father to him, albeit a rather remote one, a man whose vast wealth he’d helped to create, could have turned on him so quickly. Zach had spent half his savings on lawyers, who worked out a deal by which he forked over most of his remaining assets to the government and was barred for life from the securities industry. Julian emerged unscathed, his reputation and wealth intact.
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