Annabel
Khalid was dead. Annabel had heard him die. The idea of it made her physically sick. She’d thrown up twice—once at the airport in Geneva, once in the plane’s tiny bathroom sink. She couldn’t stop replaying their conversation in her head. His voice had been tense and labored, as though he was walking quickly while speaking to her. The sounds of the city blared in the background. Horns, wind, static, white noise. He cut in and out; she could hardly hear him. Had he been walking down a busy street in London? Was he at a train station? He said something she couldn’t understand. Muffled sounds of a scuffle. Then nothing.
Had there been a gunshot? Annabel wasn’t sure. At first she thought the thump she’d heard was the sound of the phone hitting the pavement. But it could have been a shot. Or a blunt blow to the head. It was her fault. If she hadn’t taken the laptop to him, he would still be alive.
Ten hours after her conversation with Khalid, Annabel’s plane touched down at Las Américas International Airport in the Dominican Republic. She felt faint from the heat. She’d dressed for November in New York, not a trip to the tropics. She pulled at her turtleneck as she waited for her suitcase. If the airport was air-conditioned, she couldn’t feel it. She felt her back grow damp from the humid night air.
Her bag was the last to drop onto the carousel. Annabel collected it and glanced around the terminal. She hadn’t eaten since Geneva. It was past midnight and the kiosks were closed. She walked to a vending machine and slid her credit card into it before realizing it was out of order. She sighed and stooped over the drinking fountain instead.
The rental car booth was at the far end of the terminal. The clerk behind it was chatting with a baggage handler. Annabel loitered by the drinking fountain until the baggage handler had waved good-bye and headed off in the other direction. When he was out of sight, she stepped forward and smiled at the clerk.
“¿Habla usted Inglés?” Annabel asked. She was too tired to communicate in another language. The clerk was young, maybe twenty-five at most. His hair was long and he wore earphones around his neck. The sign overhead indicated that he would be closing in ten minutes. He glanced at his watch before answering.
“Sí, señorita. What can I do for you?”
“I need to get to Isla Alma. Can you help me?”
The clerk frowned. “Isla Alma is a private island. Do you mean La Palma?”
“No. I mean Isla Alma.”
“You’ll need to go to the port in Boca Chica. It’s thirty-five kilometers from here. Is someone on the island expecting you?”
“No.”
“The only way on or off that island is by a private boat.”
“There’s no ferry? Or water taxi?”
The clerk laughed. “To Isla Alma? No, señorita.”
The despair on Marina’s face must have been apparent, because the clerk sighed. He gestured for her to lean over the counter. “Listen. My cousin, he drives a limo. He’s a good guy. He’s done with his shift. He was just waiting around for me upstairs. He can take you there if you want. So you don’t have to drive. You look tired. You shouldn’t be on the road so late.”
“I am tired.” Annabel hesitated, but only for a minute. And of all the risks she was running, getting into a car with a stranger was probably the least of them. “Okay. Thank you. That would be good.”
“He usually charges twenty-five dollars. You’re American, right?”
“Yes. That’s fine.”
“Okay. I’ll go get him now. Wait here. He’ll take you to the port in Boca Chica. After that, you’re on your own. Isla Alma, it’s not exactly a place where most people are welcome.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
The clerk shrugged. “Es tu vida.”
“May I use your phone? My cell phone is dead.”
“I’m not supposed to let anyone use the phone.”
“Please. I’ll be quick, I promise.” Marina riffled through her purse and found an American twenty-dollar bill. She placed it on the counter.
The clerk took it and shot her a look.
“It’s all I have. Unless you want euros. I’m sorry.”
He tucked the bill into his back pocket. “Be fast, okay? I’ll get my cousin.”
“Thank you.”
Annabel waited until the clerk was gone before pulling out Lorenzo’s business card. Call me if you need a friend, he had said after Matthew’s memorial service. She hoped he meant it.
The phone rang, once, twice, three times.
Please, please, please, Annabel whispered to herself. Please answer the phone. It hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to get to Lorenzo once she arrived in the Dominican Republic. Isla Alma was her refuge of last resort. From here, she had no other options.
“Alo?”
“Lorenzo?” Annabel’s voice shook. She looked behind her. The clerk was across the terminal, talking to two other guys. His back was to her. She turned back, hunching over the phone.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Annabel Werner. Matthew’s wife.”
“Annabel?” Lorenzo’s voice softened. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m at the airport. Las Américas. I came to see you. I was going to take a taxi to the port.”
“I’ll send my driver for you. Don’t take a taxi. Be outside the terminal in fifteen minutes.”
“Are you sure? I’m sorry. I know it’s the middle of the night and—” Across the terminal, the clerk turned around and pointed at her. The two men stared. Annabel felt a wave of uneasiness. Something about the way they were assessing her felt wrong.
“I’m glad you called. Annabel?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t talk to anyone until then. Don’t use your credit card. Just keep to yourself. Okay?”
“Okay. Thank you, Lorenzo. Thank you so much.”
“Be safe, my friend.”
Annabel hung up the phone and slipped away from the desk. By the time the clerk and his friends had returned, she was gone.
Zoe
In the darkness, Zoe loaded her suitcase into the trunk of her uncle’s Peugeot. Clement warned her that the car was old and the tires were thin. It might not survive the seven-hour drive to Paris. Perhaps she could take the bus to Arles in the morning, and from there, the train?
Zoe couldn’t wait until morning. She told Clement that Arthur, her boyfriend, was sick. The truth was that she feared he was either dead or would be soon. She hadn’t heard from him since Julian’s arrival in Saint-Théresè-de-la-Mer.
It had been Zoe’s idea to give data to Duncan Sander. Arthur had been against it at first. Yes, they needed to do something, he said. They couldn’t stand by while their companies hid money for terrorists and drug dealers and war criminals like Assad. But what could a journalist do, except write a story? Words couldn’t protect them. Words couldn’t arrest Jonas Klauser, Fares Amir, the lawyers at Schmit & Muller. Words couldn’t do anything. Arthur thought they should go to the police.
But which police, and where? Jonas Klauser was friends with the head of Fedpol. Zoe had seen them skiing together at a firm outing in Zermatt. That the federal authorities in Luxembourg were no different. The managing partners of Schmit & Muller had friends everywhere. It was the reason they had been able to operate for as long as they had in the manner that they did. Unlike Swiss United, which had legitimate clients and not-so-legitimate, Schmit & Muller’s entire business was setting up shell companies for offshore banks. All their clients were hiding something. Bribing officials was a matter of course. Arthur suggested going to the Americans, but Zoe didn’t think the Department of Justice would care about protecting either of them, since they weren’t US citizens. They needed to find another way out.
Duncan Sander had contacted Arthur first. Tim Morris, a banker at Caribbean International Bank and a friend
of Arthur’s, was the connection between them. Duncan was looking for Morty Reiss, Tim said. Tim had managed Morty’s account at CIB until Schmit & Muller abruptly closed it overnight, moving Reiss’s money to Swiss United instead. Could Arthur help Duncan find him?
At first, Arthur ignored Duncan’s calls. But then, Tim turned up dead. The victim of a freak boating accident, or so they said. Arthur was stunned. Zoe was not. I told you, she said. They’re ruthless, these banks. They’ll do anything, to any of us.
Zoe knew this firsthand. She’d known it when she’d accepted the job at Swiss United. Jonas had made it very clear: Zoe worked for him and him alone. She did whatever he told her to do. For that, she got paid eighty thousand euros a year, plus a healthy bonus if she did well. For someone like Zoe, it was a good offer. One she couldn’t possibly refuse.
Matthew had been Zoe’s first and only assignment. Every week, she was supposed to give Jonas a report: who Matthew met with and spoke to; any email communications of interest; where he traveled for work and for pleasure. Jonas wanted to know about Matthew’s family and friends, and especially his wife. Jonas said he liked to keep close tabs on his junior bankers, particularly the ones he thought had promise.
It wasn’t long before Jonas encouraged Zoe to sleep with Matthew. She knew that other girls at Swiss United did that, with both bankers and clients. It was just a way of getting closer to him, Jonas said. But Zoe knew what it really was: a means of leverage, should Matthew ever try to defect.
The setup had been easy enough. A weekend at the famously luxe Hotel Metropole in Monte Carlo. A reward for the top-earning bankers and their assistants. Lavish, alcohol-fueled dinners each night, followed by private rooms at the Casino de Monte-Carlo, all paid for by Swiss United. Some of the bankers brought home call girls; others rented sports cars and blew through hundreds of thousands of dollars on blackjack, roulette, craps. Zoe played her part, dressing in couture gowns and eye-popping jewels, all selected for her by Elsa Klauser. Dressed as she was, she could have had any man in Monaco. But she had her eye on Matthew. She was paid to.
Zoe had told herself that it didn’t mean anything. She had slept with plenty of men before where it hadn’t. And she liked Matthew. He was handsome and kind and funny. Anyway, wasn’t that really the reason she’d come to Swiss United in the first place? In the hopes of landing herself a rich banker as a husband? If she played her cards right, she could end up a banker’s wife in Geneva. That was the plan. If someone had told her one year earlier that she’d be fucking a guy like Matthew in a suite at a five-star hotel in Monte Carlo, she’d have been thrilled. But this time felt different. This time, it was awful.
Maybe it was because she was being recorded. Zoe knew that a hidden surveillance camera had been installed in the room, just over the television. She’d been instructed to position herself in such a way that there would be clear shots of both her and Matthew.
Maybe it was Matthew’s resistance that made it feel so wrong. Zoe got him back to her room by pretending she was too drunk to get there safely. When she reached up to kiss him in the elevator, he flinched and pulled away. It was only after another drink in the suite that she was able to coax him into bed. They hadn’t even had sex. Just fooled around a little before Matthew passed out in a cold stupor. In the middle of the night, Matthew called out for Annabel in his sleep. When Zoe woke up, he was gone.
The next day, Zoe numbed herself with alcohol and Xanax. She feigned the flu so that she could sleep all day and avoid anyone from Swiss United. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d been violated, though she had clearly been the aggressor. Matthew had been so out of it that Zoe suspected he’d been drugged. She wasn’t sure that he even remembered what had happened. He had apologized, red-faced, a few days later. He seemed relieved when she told him he had nothing to be sorry for, and that nothing of any consequence had happened between them.
But something had happened. Zoe had changed. She became depressed and then angry. Self-loathing slowly morphed into rage. She hated Jonas Klauser with every fiber of her being. For what he had done to her, for the way he treated not just her but everyone around her. Zoe decided she would make him pay.
Slowly and carefully, she began to collect evidence against Jonas. It was easy enough to find it; she had access to all Matthew’s files and emails, as well as most of the corporate database. The trick was not getting caught. Once she met Arthur, she realized the case she was building was far bigger than Jonas Klauser. The whole system was rotten to the core. But between the two of them, they could take it down.
After Tim died, Arthur agreed to reach out to Duncan Sander. Together, he and Zoe would provide Duncan with enough information to not only track down Morty Reiss but to blow the whole world of offshore banking wide open. It was the only way out, Zoe thought. Eventually all this would come crashing down around them, and there was plenty of evidence to land both of them in jail for a lifetime. This way, they’d be the first to jump off a sinking ship. All they had to do was stay alive long enough to see the stories in print.
After everything she’d done to him, Zoe couldn’t stand to see Matthew go down with Jonas Klauser. He didn’t deserve that. So one night, while walking home from the bank, Zoe told Matthew that there was a mole inside Swiss United. Someone she knew was leaking data from inside the bank to a journalist in the US. Soon, a story was about to be written that would incriminate them all.
Save yourself, she said. Go to the authorities before they come to you. That was how Matthew ended up cooperating with Hunter Morse, an agent at the Department of Justice.
Now Matthew was dead, and Duncan, too. And if she didn’t get moving, Zoe knew she’d be dead before morning.
* * *
• • •
ONCE SHE WAS outside of Sainte-Thérèse-de-la-Mer, Zoe breathed a little easier. She turned on the radio. Her foot lightened on the gas.
When she reached the Vaucluse Mountains that she realized she was being followed. It was a feeling, more than anything. A prickling of her skin, a heightened awareness of the headlights behind her. It could be anyone, she told herself. But it was Julian. Deep in her bones, she knew it was him.
Zoe had chosen this route for a reason. The roads in this part of the country were winding and dangerous, particularly at night. At places, there were tunnels hewn from the rock, barely big enough to fit a compact car. Occasionally, the left-hand side of the road evaporated into thin air. If a driver was not careful, a quick or careless turn could send them careering off a cliff.
Even a seasoned driver had to have her wits about her. Zoe accelerated slightly; a test. The car behind followed suit. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He wanted her to know he was on her tail. The two cars soared through the mountains, never more than thirty meters apart. It reminded Zoe of those magnetic cars her brother played with as a child. The bumper of one attracted the front of the other. But when turned around, the cars would repel each other, pushing each into opposite directions.
Rain began to fall. Light at first, then harder. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. Zoe felt the tires, bald from overuse, slipping at each turn. She tightened her knuckles around the wheel, as though she could exert control over the car with sheer determination. A light blinked on Zoe’s dashboard. She was driving so quickly and the turns were coming so close together, she was afraid to look down at it. Hopefully the light would go off on its own. Clement warned her that the car had peculiarities; so many, in fact, he hadn’t bothered to enumerate them.
The light flashed insistently. Finally, on a relatively straight patch of road, Zoe looked down. To her horror, she realized the gas tank was empty.
How was this possible? The needle showed a full tank when she left Sainte-Thérèse-de-la-Mer. Now it had swung all the way to the left. Maybe it was a mistake, she told herself. A quirk of an old car.
Or maybe the quirk was that the old Peugeot was less gas-efficient t
han she thought, and it didn’t let you know until the very last minute.
There was no gas station for miles. The only car on the road was the one behind her. If she stopped moving, she was dead. Especially if he was armed, it would be easy for Julian to overpower her, drag her out of the car, and push her into one of the bottomless ravines all around them. No one would ever find her body. If they did, they might just think she’d jumped. With no job and not much family, no one would be surprised if Zoe Durand killed herself. She’d certainly considered it. If they killed Arthur, she’d have nothing left.
Now that she was confronted with the possibility of death, though, Zoe reacted like a scared animal. Her mind quieted and only one thought remained: survival. Her senses grew heightened, and she could feel every bump in the road beneath her tires. The sound of the rain faded away and was replaced only with the rush of her own blood coursing through her ears. She leaned forward, her eyes peering into the darkness ahead.
She knew exactly where she was. She’d driven this road with Clement plenty of times. Up ahead, fewer than two hundred meters, began the Gorges de la Nesque. Clement had told her that more than a hundred years ago, his relatives had worked on a railroad through the Gorges de la Nesque, but the project had been abandoned. After that, his family had moved farther south, eventually settling in Saint-Théresè to become fishermen. Now, the D942, the narrow road on which Zoe was driving, was the only road through this canyon. She was about to reach the first of a series of low tunnels carved out of the mountain face. It was low, only two and half meters high. Not high enough for a truck or even an SUV to pass through. When Zoe was young, Clement had told her that trolls lived there. At the time, the thought had both terrified and thrilled her. She remembered the feeling of vertigo she’d experienced at a turnoff, when she’d glanced over the edge of the low barrier that separated the road from the sheer drop below.
The tunnel was an opportunity, she realized. She knew it was coming; Julian did not. Zoe could use this to her advantage. She accelerated as she approached the tunnel. The car behind her revved its engine, closing the gap between them slightly. Though she hadn’t said a prayer in years, she murmured one beneath her breath. She needed all the help she could get.
The Banker’s Wife Page 23
