The Banker’s Wife

by Cristina Alger

  “Annabel?” Julian’s voice drifted through the bedroom door. “Are you all right?”

  Annabel’s head jerked up. Instinctively, she grabbed the towel from around her feet and pulled it up over her body. “I’m fine!” she called out. “Just got out of the shower.”

  “All right. I was just getting worried.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll be ready soon.”

  “Take your time.”

  Annabel flipped over the painting. She ran a hand over the backing paper. Along one edge, she felt a small ridge. Her eyes widened. She hurried to the bedroom door and, as quietly as possible, turned the lock on the door. Then she ran back into the bathroom. In a drawer, she found an old Dopp kit of Matthew’s, crammed with odds and ends. And an old razor. Band-Aids. Antiseptic spray. Through the pipes, she could hear the muffled sound of Julian talking to someone in the living room. She was running out of time. Her fingers closed around what she was looking for: a small pocketknife.

  She rushed back to the painting and slid the blade between the paper and the frame. Gently, she eased the adhesive on the paper until she was able to pull it back. There, taped to the inside edge of the frame, was a USB. Beneath it, a folded note.

  Annabel pulled it free and, with trembling fingers, unfurled the note. Her eyes swelled with tears when she saw Matthew’s handwriting and the slight smudge on the edge of the paper where his left hand dragged across the ink.

  Beloved A—

  If you are reading this, something has gone terribly wrong. Thank you for listening to me and remembering what I told you about there being value in this frame. You remain the cleverest person I know.

  I am so sorry for everything. I never should have brought us here. Swiss United is a terrible place. They do terrible things for terrible people. I was, I’ll admit, initially enchanted by the money. But it isn’t worth it. I tried to get us out of it, but perhaps I acted too late.

  If you are reading this, I am likely dead. Zoe may be, too. Bring this USB to Lorenzo Mora. I trust him to get it to the right people. He will explain everything.

  Please know this, Beloved A— I loved you from the moment I first saw you. That love has never wavered. It has only grown stronger. I have made mistakes, and I take full responsibility for them. But I never, ever stopped loving you. If you believe only one thing, believe that.

  Yours always,

  Matthew

  Annabel curled the note in her hand. Her eyes closed as she pressed it to her breast. Her tears fell to the floor. Her hair, still wet, dripped down her naked back.

  “Annabel?” Julian’s voice came again from the hallway. “Jonas is anxious to get on the road. Are you nearly ready?”

  “I’ll be right there,” she called, her voice hoarse. She hurried to the closet, pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversize sweater. In her back pocket, she tucked the note with the USB.

  In the drawer of her desk, she found a glue stick. It was old, but it would have to suffice. As quickly as she could, she dragged it across the back of the frame and, with the tips of her fingers, resealed the backing paper. Then, she propped the picture against the wall, sideways, just as she’d found it.

  In a suitcase, she tossed together a few basic items: a cosmetics case, a hairbrush, a change of clothes. From a small box on her nightstand, she took a pair of pearl earrings that had once been her mother’s and a bracelet that Matthew had given her on their first anniversary. Off the top shelf in the closet, she pulled out the box of notes. After a moment’s deliberation, she picked out the note Matthew had written to her on the day he proposed, scribbled on a page he’d ripped out of a day planner. She kissed it, and then folded it and tucked it into her wallet. Everything else, she decided, she could leave behind.

  Before zipping up her bag, Annabel picked up the pocketknife and slipped it into her cosmetics case. Small and dulled from use, it wasn’t much of a weapon. Still, just knowing it was there gave her comfort. Where she was going, she’d need all the comfort she could get.

  Marina

  Twelve stories. All set to run the following day on the homepages of the most influential publications around the globe. Christophe Martin at the ICIJ had judiciously divided the stories among top journalists at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph, Daily Mail, China Daily, El País, Financial Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Moscow Times, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Owen’s website, the Deliverable. Collectively, the stories would demonstrate how Schmit & Muller had, for decades, funneled money from heads of state, cartel members, terrorists, corporate CEOs, arms dealers, financiers, tycoons, sheikhs, and other members of the global elite into numbered accounts at offshore banks like Swiss United and CIB for the explicit purpose of hiding those assets. The results would be devastating. Those exposed would be arrested, fined, disgraced. Several world leaders would be ousted. Secret relationships and business deals would be made public. Families would be split apart over the discovery of hidden assets, illegally gotten gains, evaded taxes, payments to mistresses and, in a few cases, second families. The stories were just the beginning. Owen and Christophe had selected these twelve stories to be released at once because they packed the biggest punch. But follow-up pieces would be rolling in for weeks, months, years. Vast quantities of data still remained inside of Maestra, unexamined. Owen sat at his office desk, nervously circling a pen between his fingers. As he dialed into the final conference call before the stories went to copy, he knew he was sitting on what was potentially the biggest story of them all. He just wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  “Owen Barry here. Sorry for the delay.”

  “Hey, Owen,” Christophe Martin said. “I think we’re all on now. Any update on the Ellis story?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I was a few minutes late. I was hoping to have something for you all, but I don’t think I do. We’ll have to just go forward with the pieces we have.”

  “We could delay another day or two if that would help,” Mike Sheeran at the New York Times piped up. “The Ellis story is dynamite.”

  “I’m concerned about our source,” Owen replied. “He’s been radio silent for twenty-four hours now. I don’t think it’s fair to him to continue to delay.”

  “We agree,” said Sergei Ivanov, one of the Russian journalists from the Moscow Times. “For us, a delay is too risky. Things are tense in Moscow. A colleague at our paper was attacked this morning with a knife in an alley outside his house. His laptop was stolen and he was left for dead. He’s in critical condition; we’re waiting to hear how he does in surgery. The police are saying it was a random mugging, but we don’t believe that. We’re concerned that word is spreading about an investigation into offshore assets. None of us are safe.”

  “Have you left Moscow?”

  “Yes. We’re all right for the time being. But the longer we delay—”

  “We feel similarly here,” Andres Gomez at El País announced. “The Mora Cartel has eyes everywhere. We need to run this story now. We cannot sit on it much longer.”

  “All right.” Owen tilted back in his chair, hands tucked behind his head. “Agreed. The Ellis story can wait.”

  Owen leaned farther back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the elevators open. Marina stepped out. A black skirt swirled around her hips; her white blouse was cut to reveal just a hint of her delicate shoulders. She pushed up onto her toes, looking for him. Owen swiveled his chair around, nearly toppling backward in the process.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered, catching himself on the edge of the table.

  “You there, Owen?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Guys, I need to call you back.”

  “We need to submit tonight or else—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I’ll call you back.”

  Owen clicked off the call. He was still fumbling with his headset when Marina appeared in front of his desk.

  “
How’d you get in here?”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Sorry, I figured when you slammed the door in my face you probably needed a few days to cool off before we could hang out again.”

  “I’m sorry about that. I was upset.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “You were angry, too.”

  “Look, Marina, it’s great to see you and all, but I’m on a deadline. Can we make up some other time?”

  “I’m not here to make up. I’m here to help. Can I sit?”

  Owen stared at her, assessing. Then he looped a foot around the empty chair at the cube next to him and kicked it over to her.

  “If you’re here to convince me not to run the Ellis story, you’re wasting your time. And mine.”

  “I’m not. I’m here to help you finish it.”

  Owen let out a surprised laugh. “See, this is why I’m not married. What the fuck happened? Did you have a fight with Junior or something? You’ve done quite the one-eighty on that family.”

  Marina sighed. “I understand that you’re angry at me. And I’m sorry about that. We can talk about that later. When does this need to go to copy?”

  “Five for the print editions, eleven for the websites. We want everything to be up by midnight New York time.”

  “Okay. I think we can do this.”

  “Only if you’ve got the smoking gun. Because I don’t have enough to run a good story. All I’ve got is a paper trail linking Ellis to Swiss United and some transfers between shell companies that I think belong to Ellis and I think belong to Assad. But that’s it and it’s pretty tenuous. We need some kind of confirmation.”

  Marina reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “Like a taped confession?”

  “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “Would I joke about something like this?”

  “You talked to James Ellis?”

  “I went straight to his house after I left your apartment. I wanted answers. I asked him about his accounts at Swiss United and his dealings with Assad. He admitted to both. And then he told me I would never tell anyone because it would ruin Grant’s life—and mine—if I did.”

  “He’s right. It will ruin your life.”

  “I know. And Grant’s. And Grant doesn’t deserve that.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because James had Duncan killed.”

  Owen’s expression turned from surprise to shock. “James Ellis had Duncan murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have this on record?”

  “Not on record, exactly. But he didn’t do a great job of denying it. And I think I know how we can prove it. We’ll have to work quickly, though. I need to get down to DC.”

  “DC? Why?”

  “Hunter Morse. Remember? At the Department of Justice. Duncan had his name circled in his day planner. He was supposed to go see him the day after he died. I think he’s the key to this whole story.”

  “You think he’ll talk to you?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot.”

  Owen checked his watch. “If you leave now, you could be there by six.”

  Marina stood up and pulled her purse over her shoulder. “I’ll send you the audio recording of Ellis from the car.”

  “Hey, Marina?” Owen said, as she turned to leave his cube.

  She looked at him, one perfect brow arched.

  “Let’s nail this guy to the wall.”

  Annabel

  Annabel stood at the window, gazing out across the expanse of Lake Geneva. The water glowed at this time of day, a mirror for the electric blues and celestial pinks of the brightening morning sky. In the distance, the craggy white mountains stood, silent and imposing, like sentinels beside the lake. The vertical rises and drops of their peaks were awe-inspiring. Annabel wondered how many people had lost their lives to those mountains. She thought of men with ice axes and crampons, buried beneath avalanches of snow. Of hikers who set off in the early morning light, never to return. Of her husband’s plane, smashed to metallic chords on a mountaintop, a place so remote that it had never before been touched by any living being. She thought of Matthew’s ashes, disappearing on the wind like smoke.

  The room felt like a gilded prison cell. The walls were lacquered in a brilliant eggshell blue; the drapes were made of a thick, expensive-looking chintz. The bed was an antique four-poster. Like something out of Versailles, Annabel thought. Jonas and Julian had insisted that she stay here, at the Klausers’ home in Cologny. It was for her protection, they said. They couldn’t in good conscience let her stay in a hotel. So here she was, staying in a lavishly appointed guest room, with eighteenth-century furniture and a rug so soft it felt like cashmere, just ten feet down the hall from Jonas and Elsa. She’d never felt less safe in her life.

  She hadn’t slept. She hadn’t bothered to unpack her suitcase, either. She didn’t want to get comfortable here. She didn’t like the idea of being naked in Jonas Klauser’s house. She was vulnerable enough as it was. Within the hour, a car would take her to the airport. From there, she would fly back to London, where Khalid would meet her at Heathrow. He would give her Matthew’s laptop and she would board a plane to New York. Then she’d board a train to DC and find Hunter Morse.

  Jonas Klauser knew none of this, of course. Only that she was on a one-way flight home to New York. She couldn’t stay in Switzerland any longer, she told him. It was too hard for her there. She just wanted to go home.

  He had arranged for her flight. First class, nonstop. She had waited until he was asleep and then she had called the airline to change her ticket so that she had a one-hour layover in London. She changed the payment method, too, so that the charge would go on her credit card instead of his. She figured Jonas wouldn’t notice. Even if he did, she hoped he would think she was just being polite.

  Annabel heard a knock on the door.

  “Annabel?” Elsa’s muffled voice came from the hallway. “Darling, your car is here.”

  “Thank you,” Annabel called, trying not to sound as on edge as she actually was. “Out in a minute.”

  She gazed out the window for one last moment. The sun was rising above the horizon, bathing the mountains in light. She pressed her fingers to the glass. She felt its coolness against her skin. It was nearly freezing outside, she thought. The bright morning sun was deceptive, making the lake look inviting instead of deadly cold to the touch.

  “Good-bye, Matthew,” she murmured, her eyes closing. “I love you.”

  Then she pulled away from the window, away from the view of the lake and the mountains beyond. It would be her last real glimpse of Geneva. She shut the shades and headed for the door.

  Jonas and Elsa were waiting for Annabel in the hallway. Jonas moved quickly to take her suitcase. They seemed as nervous as she felt. Jonas descended the stairs, her suitcase in his hand. Elsa trailed behind, seeming unsure of what to do or how to be of help.

  “I’m sorry you can’t stay for breakfast,” she said. “Can I send you off with something?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

  “Don’t be silly. You were hardly here at all.”

  “Thank you. I’m eager to get home. It’s time.”

  Elsa looked troubled, but she nodded nonetheless.

  “You could have taken my driver to the airport,” Jonas said. He frowned at the town car in the driveway. “It wouldn’t have been a bother.”

  “Oh, no. You’ve done enough for me already.”

  Now came the part that Annabel dreaded. Jonas embraced her. She felt dizzy as his arms encircled her. She wanted to scream. Instead, she closed her eyes and waited for the moment to pass. Then, she forced a smile.

  It’s almost over, she told herself. By this time tomorrow, Jonas Klauser’s hand
s will be cuffed behind his back.

  “This is it, I guess,” Annabel said. She shivered involuntarily, as though her body itself was revolting against Jonas’s touch. “I’ll never forget all that you’ve done.”

  “Stay in touch,” Jonas replied. “I’d like to know how you are doing.”

  “Oh, I will. We’ll speak again soon.”

  “I hope so.”

  Annabel nodded and turned away. Her heart was in her throat as she walked out of the Klausers’ house and into the waiting car.

  * * *

  • • •

  ONCE SHE’D REACHED the airport, Annabel felt her shoulders begin to release from around her ears. The hardest part was behind her now. Her departure from Geneva had gone smoothly. She had a plan; three more steps to go. She had to collect the laptop. Bring it to Hunter Morse. And then wait for the arrests to begin.

  Jonas and Julian would be first. Then Fares Amir and the lawyers at Schmit & Muller. From what Khalid had told her, Matthew’s laptop was filled with damning evidence against all of them, hundreds of documents that proved beyond a doubt that they colluded to hide the assets of hundreds of international criminals, from Assad to Putin. Countless others would be arrested, too. Lawyers, accountants, bankers. People who Annabel had met and perhaps even liked. People who had attended Matthew’s memorial service; maybe some who had considered him a friend. People who may or may not have made criminal decisions. Maybe they were just doing as they were told. Maybe, like Zoe, they had been naive enough to think that Swiss United was just like any other bank. Annabel was certainly guilty of such thinking. How wrong she had been. How wrong they all had been, these cogs in the wheel of a vast criminal enterprise.

  Her flight was boarding. Annabel rose from her seat and headed to the gate. As she was about to hand over her boarding pass to the attendant, her phone rang. She stepped back, allowing the next passenger in line to move ahead of her. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but from the country code, she knew it was coming from the United Kingdom.