The high-ceilinged rooms were crowded with guests. Music played, and the conductor, who had the look of a man who had just smoked a good joint, his bald head shining and face covered with a five o’clock shadow, made a half bow to the assembled crowd. He nodded to Stanley.
“Do you know him?” Christine asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said, and then felt someone embrace him from behind, and the moist press of a kiss to his cheek. He stepped back, and saw Mila, in a beige silk dress, pale, and looking taller than usual.
“Stanley!” cried Mila. “I’ve missed you so much!”
Stanley freed himself from her embrace.
“Mila, this is my wife, Christine. Christine, this is Mila, Viktor Gagarin’s wife.”
“Ha!” Mila exclaimed. “Finally! I’ve been dying to meet you.” She extended her hand to Christine, who shook it with a tight smile on her face.
“Where is your husband?” asked Stanley.
“My former husband, you mean,” corrected Mila. “Where do you think? Pushing his deals with some officials or some other assholes. Boring! You know,” Mila said, turning to Christine, “your husband and I are great friends.”
Stanley shot a quick glance at his wife. Her mouth no longer held a smile, and she looked from Mila back to Stanley in surprise.
“He brightened up my lonely days with this pack of idiots. Your husband is the only one who can understand me lately. He knows how to entertain like no one else. Maybe you like to have fun as well?”
“I try to keep it within limits,” said Christine, at a loss.
“That’s a big mistake!” Mila replied. “I’ve learned one thing in my short life…”
“What’s that?” asked Stanley nervously.
“Not to limit myself in anything!”
“Hm, maybe you should be a bit…reasonable in your pursuits?” Stanley hedged.
“No, you idiot,” Mila said, giving Stanley a pinch on the cheek. “Any experience is better than lack of experience. That’s the meaning of life. Oh, damn!”
Shamil, dressed all in black, was headed their way.
“Hi, McKnight,” barked Shamil. “Mila, Viktor wants to see you. Right now!”
“We’ll talk more later, Stanley,” Mila said, giving Christine a brief nod and following after Shamil. Stanley sighed and took a drink of champagne.
“Who was that?” asked Christine.
“I told you, Gagarin’s wife.”
“No, the scary guy who came for her.”
“He’s Gagarin’s head of security.”
“Does he also shoot well?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Forget it!” Christine’s mood had turned; she looked around her with clear displeasure, walking unwillingly along with Stanley. She finished her champagne and took another.
“What’s wrong, honey?” asked Stanley, taking Christine’s hand.
“Nothing!”
“But I can tell that something…”
“Shut up, Stanley! Look, your Mila’s coming back.”
“She’s not my Mila at all,” began Stanley, but didn’t finish his sentence. Gagarin was approaching, Mila’s arm in his. The pair looked a bit comical, Stanley thought—a short, unkempt man, unshaven and with tufts of hair sticking out around his bald spot, and the tall, slender Mila with her perfectly coiffed hair. The only thing they had in common was their pale skin and dark circles under their eyes. Gagarin eyes were full of appreciation as he took in Christine.
“Well, introduce us, Stanley!” Gagarin said. “Actually, let me do the honors. I’m Viktor, and you must be Christine. He’s hidden you away from us for too long.” Viktor wagged a finger at Stanley. “How could he, the scoundrel. Mila just told me—look at this beauty, that’s our Stanley’s wife! So how do you like St. Petersburg?”
“It’s okay,” Christine said with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Okay! I can’t believe it, the first time I ever heard that! Okay! Come with me. Let me show you something and introduce you to a few people. Leave your boring banker behind!” Gagarin ceremoniously offered Christine his arm, and she looked back at Stanley with a grimace before taking his arm and disappearing into the crowd with him.
“Stanley,” Mila whined, “I’m so unhappy, Stanley…”
“Not now, Mila! Later!”
“Later? Why did you drag your American wife here?”
“Because I’m an American! Because I love her. Because…”
“You love her, huh?” Mila interrupted. “Well, well, you be careful and make sure you don’t get yourself castrated.”
“Not now, Mila!” Stanley said, pasting a wide, fake smile on his face as a billionaire oil baron passed by and nodded at them. “We’ll talk later.” He put his empty glass on a tray carried by a passing footman. “I’ll be back.”
Stanley moved into the crowd, circling the room several times, but couldn’t find Christine or Gagarin anywhere. He was surprised to see Father Vsevolod, then the members of the Famous Five, not all together, but each at the head of small groups of guests. Finally, tired of searching for his wife, he stood by the food table and took two tartlets with black caviar.
Scanning the crowd from this position, he finally spotted Christine. She was alone, looking lost. Her face was unhappy. Stanley walked over and took her arm.
“Christine!”
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “To say that you’re a fucking asshole, Stan. Your lover, that stupid, arrogant girl…”
“What lover, Christine, what are you talking about?”
“Not what, but who. Mila! Have you slept with her? Well?”
“Christy!”
“Have you?”
“Okay, if you insist…what do you think? We were separated, close to a divorce. I haven’t asked you, and I’m not going to, whether you were with someone then. That’s the past. Our present is what matters.”
“I’d slap the hell out of you, if this crowd wasn’t so important for your job. Look, they’re already staring. You can go to hell, Stanley McKnight!”
She shook off Stanley’s hand, turned, and left the hall in tears.
Stanley was about to rush after her, but Biryuza stopped him.
“Russians have a saying—lovers’ quarrels are soon mended. You get me?” Biryuza was quite drunk, but holding himself together.
“Not really.”
“Never mind! Don’t you worry, Stanley! Let’s go to Shatush! You know it? Come on!”
There was a big crowd in front of the restaurant on the Moika embankment when they arrived. Some were gathered in small tents by the entrance. To get in, you had to meet the approval of the host, a man well over six feet with a face displaying no emotion.
This dispassionate oligarch—one of the richest men in Russia, according to Biryuza, was dressed in a black Adidas sweatshirt and personally greeted each new arrival.
He would occasionally spot a pretty girl in line and literally push her into the restaurant. Parked cars packed the narrow street in two rows, with taxis and cars with special accreditation for the economic forum barely squeezing through the remaining space to drop off new guests also fleeing the official ball.
Biryuza greeted the oligarch like an old friend and led Stanley into the restaurant. Inside, music played loudly, and there were so many people that Stanley was pressed against the wall, and Biryuza disappeared somewhere. Looking for some way to entertain himself, Stanley took out his pack of cigarettes and began sticking the tiny bugs onto every Russian who passed by, enjoying the thought of Frank and Marco losing their minds trying to decipher the recordings.
The show began after another surge of guests entered. A band started to play a deafening song, and there was endless vodka and champagne.
The drunker everyone got, the more it started to resembl
e a wild college party. The group started to play a song that Stanley recognized from the yacht, “Earth Through the Porthole,” and the entire crowd sang along with the vocalist.
The upper torso of the oligarch rose over the dancing crowd. Stanley squeezed in between the girls and the host, palmed one of the bugs, and cautiously placed his hand on the oligarch’s shoulder.
The tall man turned toward Stanley at the touch and shot him an unexpectedly welcoming grin and shouted something in his ear about basketball. I wonder who he took me for? thought Stanley. He gave the giant a friendly slap on the shoulder in reply, checking to make sure the bug was in place, and headed off to the bar, all without having said a word.
He was distracted from his pursuits by the ringing of his phone. He looked down at the screen to see that it was Barbara calling.
“Hi, hello!” answered Stanley, but couldn’t hear a thing over the din of the music. He hung up, squeezing through the crowd and dispersing bugs as he went, to the bar, where he took a double bourbon.
Barbara called again, and Stanley had to go outside.
“Hi, what’s up!”
“Where are you, Stanley?”
“As usual, drinking and having a bit to eat. Damn it, Barbara, what does it matter? Why are you calling this late?”
“The transfers from Gagarin’s accounts aren’t going through,” she said. “And I can’t understand why.”
“Have you asked Lagrange?”
“I’ve tried. I can’t reach him.”
“Well, I guess he decided to rest. It is late in the evening after all. Call again tomorrow.”
“But you told me to get the transfers done today.”
“Nothing terrible will happen if the transfers aren’t completed until tomorrow. Especially since I’m planning to fly to Zurich. There’s nothing for me to do here, and I’ve already spoken with Gagarin. The day after tomorrow at the very latest. Don’t worry. We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”
While Stanley was talking to Barbara, an unusually beautiful girl appeared beside him. As soon as he hung up, she began asking him in broken English to take her back into the restaurant with him.
“No problem, pretty girl,” replied Stanley in Russian.
“Are you Russian?” the girl asked, seeming disappointed.
“Not for a long time, no,” answered Stanley.
He walked back to the hotel on foot that night, even though Gala called him several times offering to pick him up.
Christine was sitting on the balcony when he walked in, a half-empty bottle of wine beside her chair.
Stanley dropped his tuxedo jacket onto the couch and stopped at the door onto the balcony.
“Hi,” he said. “You know, I feel like a real asshole. I shouldn’t have done it. However you look at it, I betrayed you. And…”
“Oh, just be quiet, Stanley. Listen to the sounds of this city. Entirely different from the ones we’re used to. And the air! The air is marvelous here.”
“Forgive me, Christine, please.”
Christine rose from her chair.
“There’s no better sight than a repentant Stanley McKnight. Go on. Repent some more! Just get undressed while you do it!”
Christine’s fingers flew as she undid the bowtie at Stanley’s collar.
“Faster, Stanley!” she walked to the bedroom, slipping out of her dress on the way. When Stanley followed her in, she was lying on the bed. She opened her arms, and Stanley stepped out of the rest of his clothes.
“You’re taking too long, Stan!”
He lay down beside her and kissed her chest.
“You’re never going to cheat on me again, Stanley. It’s my fault. You were alone too long. I shouldn’t have left you alone in Zurich.”
“I promise you, Christine. I’m going to leave everything behind soon and come back to you. For good.”
Stanley lay beside Christine, and he felt that he would love her forever. He wanted to tell her that, but thought that any words right now would come out wrong.
“Now you don’t have to hurry, baby,” whispered Christine.
A phone call from Barbara woke Stanley at six the next morning. Stanley looked at his watch, surprised that Barbara was at work so early.
Barbara said that Stanley must have misunderstood her the day before, as he had been too calm about it and then hung up for some reason. Because they really had serious problems with transfers. When Stanley asked why Barbara couldn’t go to Lagrange for help, she replied that she still couldn’t get through to him.
“So what’s going on?” Stanley shuffled over to bar on bare feet, and poured himself a full glass of orange juice.
Barbara coughed and said that Gagarin’s account had insufficient funds.
“What do you mean, insufficient? What the hell?”
“I thought you would know, Stanley.”
“How much less does he have than needed?”
Barbara paused.
“Two billion. Two billion dollars.”
“What the hell!” Stanley was suddenly having trouble catching his breath. “That’s not possible.”
He fell silent and heard Barbara sobbing on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” said Stanley. He hung up and finished his juice.
“What happened, honey?” asked Christine when Stanley came back to the bedroom.
“Nothing. I just want you!”
He put a finger to his lips, sat down on the bed, and whispered into her ear that he had very, very serious problems, and he was going to fly to Zurich, but that Christine could spend the morning in the hotel, go to a museum, and he would send her a ticket when he got to Zurich. She would have to leave the hotel in a taxi without anyone seeing her, no later than this evening, and fly back to America.
“And I can’t spend some more time here?” whispered Christine.
“For your own safety—no.”
“I wanted to spend a couple of days walking around the museum.”
“No!” whispered Stanley forcefully. “Don’t you understand that it could be deadly? You have to leave today. Do you hear me, my love? Today! Promise me.”
“Okay, honey.”
“Promise me!”
“I promise. I promise.”
Part Six:
Payback
Chapter 44
The forefathers of Jean-Michel Laville looked down on Stanley from the walls of the bank’s main meeting room.
The portrait of the bank’s founder hung over the fireplace, and his descendants were situated on either side.
As for Jean-Michel, his was a small portrait, right by the door.
His smile was reserved, the sky shone blue above him, and the tips of waves rose from the sea behind. A respectable client of the bank left that room feeling as if he was accompanied by the optimism of the bank’s owner, imbued with his confidence in their long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Now Jean-Michel was wearing a different smile. Stanley could feel his gaze burning on his cheek.
Jean-Michel and all his ancestors, now looking daggers at him as well, seemed to suspect Stanley McKnight, now sitting in a soft chair with his back to the window, of planning to deprive Laville & Cie of a significant sum of money as well as the most valuable thing in the business of banking—its centuries-old reputation.
McKnight arrived from St. Petersburg completely worn down. The long flights, transferring from one airplane to another, the cocaine, the alcohol, the lack of opportunity to get a good night’s rest—they’d all done their part.
He didn’t even feel like someone who worked at a bank anymore. He forgot the last time he had opened his clients’ investment portfolios, or checked the stock market and banking news.
He had turned into either a professional partygoe
r or a traveling salesman. The only thing Stanley wanted to do during his flight was open his laptop and check his business email. He read a letter addressed to all the senior bankers that, in accordance with a new bank policy, charges to the corporate credit card for strippers and prostitutes would no longer be reimbursed. Then he was stunned to see his access to the bank’s information system suddenly cut off. He tried to get in touch with Barbara, but she didn’t answer the phone.
Stanley thought it must be some IT glitch, a temporary breakdown, a poor connection thirty thousand feet in the air, maybe, or automatic blocks set up by the bank.
When he’d landed and made it through passport control, Stanley called Barbara. First, she didn’t answer. Then she did, and asked Stanley to come to the office immediately, her voice cold.
Stanley told her he’d have to stop off home first, at least to take a shower. Barbara was passing on Stanley’s words to someone else and listening to their instructions, told him they’d expect him at the bank in an hour and a half.
An hour later, Stanley approached the bank entrance, but his key card didn’t work on the second set of doors. He tried again. Same thing. The guard sitting at the desk located between the two sets of doors looked familiar to Stanley.
“Hi, Karl!” Stanley said.
The guard lifted his colorless eyes to Stanley. The desk hid the lower half of his face and the rest of his body. Sparse strands of blond hair framed his narrow skull.
“Karl, my card’s not working. Probably got demagnetized after so many flights! I should have left it at home.”
“That’s against the rules,” the guard replied, his voice sounding worn and gray.
“I know that the card should remain with the owner at all times,” Stanley answered, happy at least that the guard was talking, “but could you open the door for me? They’re expecting me, and I’ve just flown in urgently from Russia. By the way, hello from St. Petersburg.” Stanley pulled out a postcard with views of the city that he’d taken from his room, and placed it on the desk. “A souvenir for you!”
The guard gave a barely perceptible nod, but didn’t buzz Stanley through. Instead, a small door opened behind the desk, and a senior security officer emerged.
The Banker Who Died Page 42
