Annabel had once read an article in Town & Country magazine about Cane Bay, the private club maintained by the Mora family on Isla Alma. According to the magazine, the club consisted of a main house and thirty villas dotting the bluffs over Cane Bay. The largest of the villas, Casa Blanca, was Lorenzo Mora’s private residence. The other villas could be booked by members anytime and were said to be more luxurious than any hotel in the Caribbean.
Cane Bay’s membership was secret, though it was rumored to include heads of state, celebrities, and international captains of industry. The guest policy was strict and few outsiders had ever been allowed access to the island. The pictures in Town & Country were the first to be printed in a magazine. Annabel still remembered the gorgeous two-page spread of Casa Blanca’s stone-terraced infinity pool, its sparkling aquamarine water disappearing against the panorama of the Caribbean Sea beyond. In the picture, Lorenzo lay on a white lounge chair, his feet crossed at the ankle, his hands behind his head. He was flanked on either side by two well-known actresses, who were not wearing bathing suits, but rather floor-length ball gowns. Lorenzo himself wore a tuxedo and a pair of black slippers emblazoned with the Cane Bay logo. He looked straight at the camera, a small smile on his lips. He was well aware of his own good fortune. At the time, it had reminded Annabel of a Slim Aarons photo: luxurious and elegant, a glimpse into a lifestyle that Annabel thought no longer existed. It never occurred to her that one day Lorenzo Mora would become her husband’s client, or that she, Annabel, would visit this exquisite place. It had never occurred to her that Cane Bay was fueled by drug money and guarded by men with automatic weapons. At the time, Annabel had much to learn about the world of the ultrarich.
Annabel slumped back against the boat’s leather seat. She let her eyes close. She felt the last of her energy slipping out of her. She had made it to Isla Alma. Her refuge of last resort. After this, she had nowhere else to go. A strange sense of peace set in. Maybe Lorenzo Mora worked for Jonas Klauser. Maybe she’d be dead in the morning. But at least she could stop running. She couldn’t imagine running for one more day.
“You look exhausted.”
“I am. I’m sorry. It’s been such a long day.”
“You’ll be safe here. You should rest tonight. We’ll talk in the morning. I think I can help you make sense of everything. First, though, welcome to Isla Alma.”
Annabel sat up. She felt the side of the boat knock up against the moorings. On the dock, there was a flurry of activity. Four men, dressed alike in cargo pants and dark shirts, helped Maurizio with the dock lines. One offered her a hand and hoisted her up. For a moment, she stood still, absorbing the view. The beach glowed in the moonlight, its powdered sand the color of pearls. Palm trees rustled and frogs sang. The stars overhead seemed brighter now, and the air smelled of jasmine.
This is paradise, Annabel thought. Then a guard with a gun slung across his back stepped forward.
“Buenos noches, señora,” he said. “Let me show you to your villa.”
It wasn’t a request. Annabel looked to Lorenzo, who nodded. “Go with him. Get some rest. I’ll come for you in the morning.”
Marina
It was 12:01 a.m. The stories were up, all across the globe.
Marina stood in front of a row of computer monitors at the ICIJ offices, reading the headlines. Agnes stood to her left; Christophe Martin, to her right. All three were silent. Behind them, a symphony of telephones were ringing off the hook.
“BIGGEST DATA LEAK IN HISTORY,” read the Wall Street Journal. “INTERNAL LAW FIRM DOCUMENTS REVEAL TRILLIONS HIDDEN IN OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS.”
“LEAKED DATA FROM INSIDE A LUXEMBOURG LAW FIRM REVEAL HOW CARTELS HIDE THEIR MONEY,” declared El País.
“PUTIN HIDING MILLIONS IN OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS,” read the Moscow Times. “ILLEGAL TIES TO BRATVA, OLIGARCHS, OTHER WORLD LEADERS.”
“MEET JONAS KLAUSER, PERSONAL BANKER TO THE ASSAD FAMILY,” read the Financial Times. “AND FARES AMIR, THE HEDGE FUND MANAGER WHO LAUNDERED THEIR MONEY.”
“DEATH OF TWO PRIVATE BANKERS EYED IN CONNECTION WITH SWISS BANK LEAK,” read Le Monde.
And then, on the last screen, the front page of the Deliverable.
“LEAKED SWISS BANK DOCUMENTS REVEAL LINKS BETWEEN JAMES ELLIS AND BASHAR AL-ASSAD,” it read. “ELLIS A SUSPECT IN DEATH OF DUNCAN SANDER, JOURNALIST WHO ATTEMPTED TO UNCOVER STORY.”
Marina winced when she saw the picture beneath the headline. It showed James and Grant Ellis, walking side by side with a man Marina didn’t recognize. She leaned in closer and read the small font: James Ellis, in Geneva with his son, Grant Ellis, and Julian White, a private banker at Swiss United.
“God, that’s beautiful,” Christophe said. “What a triumph of investigative reporting. In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen something quite like this.”
From across the floor, a staffer gestured at Christophe. “Chief of police is on the line.”
“Excuse me,” Christophe said, before turning to take the call.
“There’s nothing here about Hunter,” Agnes whispered to Marina.
“Give it time,” Marina said. She put a hand on Agnes’s shoulder. “These are just the leads. There will be new stories pouring out for days. Longer.”
“When will they arrest them? The Ellises, I mean?”
“Soon. I’m sure they are working as fast as they can.”
“Won’t they try to flee the country?”
Marina frowned. “I don’t think so. Ellis is a public figure. Where would he go?”
“What about Grant?”
Marina didn’t have time to answer. Christophe walked toward them, a pained expression on his face. When he turned to Agnes, they both knew what he was about to say.
“No,” Agnes murmured.
“I’m so sorry, Agnes. They found Hunter.”
“What happened?” Marina whispered.
“He shot himself. Or so they say. He was in a friend’s garage. The friend was out of town. I don’t really know more than that.”
Agnes let out a wail, a guttural sound that seemed to silence the noisy office for a split second. Marina reached for her, and the women embraced. Agnes’s whole body shook as she cried. Marina clung to her, holding her frame upright until the worst of it had passed.
“They killed him, Marina. They did it to him; they must have. He would never . . . Hunter would never . . .”
“There will be a full investigation,” Christophe said. “I promise you that.”
Marina was silent. She didn’t have the words. Whether Hunter Morse had pulled the trigger, Agnes was right. The Ellises had killed him. Just as they had killed Duncan. And she had a hunch they had killed Matthew Werner and Fatima Amir and Omar Khoury. And the banker at CIB. How many others were there? Marina closed her eyes. She felt her stomach roil in protest.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, and ran to the bathroom. She made it into the stall just in time to throw up.
When she had finished, she sunk to her knees on the hard, tiled floor and cried. The walls of the bathroom were paper-thin, and through them, Marina could hear the din of the office—the ringing of phones, the chattering of journalists, the buzz of television sets. If she could hear them, they could hear her. But she didn’t care. She began screaming at the top of her lungs, and as she did, she pounded her fists against the metal stall door until the skin on one of her knuckles split open and she began to bleed.
Finally, when her fists were numb and her lungs were sore, Marina stopped. She pushed herself upright. She walked to the sink and splashed water on her face. She rinsed her mouth. She pulled her hair back, securing it with an elastic she kept around one wrist. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her skin glistened in the halogen light of the bathroom. She looked older than she remembered. Her cheeks were pale and hollowed against the bone. Deep creases had imprinted themsel
ves beneath her eyes. She did not feel beautiful, but she did feel strong. Blood trickled from her knuckle, but she did not feel the cut. She rinsed it beneath the cold water of the sink and then walked back out into the office, ready to fight.
Zoe
Zoe pressed her forehead against the glass and looked out over the Tuileries. The trees were white with snow. They shone in the early morning light, illuminated like Christmas ornaments. If she craned her neck, she could see the Louvre to her left, its slate-gray roof disappearing into the dawn sky. To the right, the Eiffel Tower loomed, a single spike above the horizon. She wished she could go out onto the balcony. Zoe had always wanted to stay in an apartment in the 1st arrondissement. Preferably at Le Meurice hotel, which was just next door, in one of their grand suites with balconies that overlooked all of Paris. The kind of suites that lovers took, Zoe thought, on the sort of romantic liaisons that she and Arthur had only ever taken in cities where they knew no one and were therefore in no danger of being found out. Bruges. Ljubljana. Budapest. But never Paris, where Arthur had friends and colleagues, and where, more alarming, his wife had family.
Now Zoe wondered if they would ever stay in a hotel again. How long would they keep her penned up here, in an apartment paid for by the Department of Justice? When they had arrived, the guard outside the door had told them to stay inside. No going downstairs for a walk; no cigarettes on the balcony. Too dangerous. They were to stay away from the windows, even. As though there could be snipers hiding in the trees of the Tuileries, waiting for her to emerge. Zoe wondered if the guard was still out there. Joe something, a brutish American with a crew cut and broad shoulders and a ropey neck that bulged when he spoke. When they arrived, he was standing next to the door, hands behind his back. Maybe he had switched shifts overnight, replaced by another guard. No one had told them how long this would go on, how long they could expect to live like caged rats. It would be months, Zoe suspected, maybe even years. It was the price they would pay for what they had done. Instead of going to jail like the rest of their colleagues, they would testify against them. Zoe wondered now which was worse.
A knock came at the door. Zoe hesitated; it seemed too early for official business. Arthur was sleeping. They had arrived at the apartment well past midnight. It had been a last-minute solution. No one quite knew what to do with them. They couldn’t stay at the Le Monde offices forever. Neither one could go home; it wasn’t safe. They couldn’t check into a hotel. Finally, Owen Barry had negotiated a protective custody arrangement with the Department of Justice. If the DOJ wanted Zoe and Arthur to testify, they would need to keep them alive.
Now the reality of what they had done was beginning to sink in. To the outside world, Zoe Durand and Arthur Maynard might be anonymous sources. But inside their companies, their covers were blown. They were the leak. And that meant that they would have targets on their backs for the rest of their lives.
The knock came again, more insistent this time. Zoe heard Arthur stirring in the bedroom. She strode across the living room and peered through the keyhole. When she saw that it was Simon Cressy, the editor of Le Monde, she opened the door.
“Good morning, Zoe,” Simon said. Behind him stood two men she did not recognize. “I’m sorry to trouble you so early. Did you get any rest?”
Zoe shook her head. “Not really. Please, come in.”
The three men entered the apartment. Zoe gestured for them to sit.
“This is Bill Holden from the Department of Justice,” Simon explained. “And Mark Moyes from the Internal Revenue Service.”
Arthur appeared in the bedroom doorway. He wore the same clothes as yesterday: jeans and a rumpled button-down shirt. He had slept in those clothes. He would again tonight, unless someone brought him a change. He ran his hand through his hair, attempting to tame it.
“Sorry,” he said, and kissed Zoe on the cheek. “Didn’t realize we’d be having visitors so early.”
“Apologies for the intrusion,” Bill Holden said. He, too, looked like he had slept in his clothes. His shirt was creased and there was a light stain on one side of the collar. “We took the red-eye here and we thought it was better to come straight to the apartment. To be blunt, Mr. Maynard, we’re concerned for your safety here in Paris.”
“So are we.” Arthur let out a gruff chuckle. “I watched Jonas Klauser stake out my apartment with a pair of armed men less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“There is a warrant out for Mr. Klauser’s arrest. But as you probably know, that doesn’t mean you and Ms. Durand are safe to go about your daily lives.”
“I imagine we never will be again.”
Holden nodded. “Your safety will depend on the cooperation of several governments, not just us. As you know, the rules are different in Luxembourg and in Switzerland. Mr. Klauser is a US citizen, but Hans Hoffman and Peter Weber are not.”
“I don’t have much faith in law enforcement in Luxembourg,” Arthur replied. “If I did, I would have gone to them in the first place.”
“We understand. Ordinarily, the Department of Justice offers this sort of protection only to people who come to us directly as whistle-blowers. But in your case, we know why you decided to approach the press instead.”
“It’s not just the authorities in Luxembourg,” Zoe said. “Matthew Werner went to the Department of Justice. He ended up dead.”
“Mr. Werner’s tragic death was the result of the actions of one rogue Department of Justice employee. I assure you, we are doing everything we can internally to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.”
“Has Hunter Morse been arrested?”
“Hunter Morse is dead. He killed himself.”
Zoe tightened her grip around Arthur’s hand. “That’s awful.”
“Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one. Julian White’s body turned up yesterday as well.”
“Julian White? From Swiss United?” Zoe felt his name catch in her throat.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Car wreck. His body was found in a ravine in the Vaucluse Mountains.”
“Was anyone else hurt?” Zoe heard herself ask. She didn’t want to keep talking about Julian, but it seemed like the appropriate response. She leaned in against Arthur, steadying her body against his. It hadn’t occurred to her that they’d find his body so soon. She had hoped they wouldn’t at all.
“No. He was alone in the car. We suspect it might have been intentional.”
“Intentional?”
“A suicide.”
Zoe let out a sharp exhale.
“That’s terrible,” Arthur said.
“Terrible, yes. We haven’t ruled out the possibility of foul play, of course. In either case. There will be investigations.”
“And what about Matthew Werner’s death? Is that being investigated?” Arthur pressed.
“It is.”
Zoe closed her eyes. She felt Arthur’s arm tighten around her.
“Are you all right, Ms. Durand?”
Zoe nodded. “I’m fine. It’s just . . . So many people are dead.”
“You worked in a dangerous business, Ms. Durand.”
“I know that now.”
“At this point, we think you have two options. The first is for you to enter the Witness Protection Program. We will give you new identities, appearances, passports. Your names will never appear in the press in connection with the leak.”
“Would we still have to testify? At trial, or before the US Senate?”
“Yes. But we could do it in a way that protects your identity.”
“Klauser already knows we’re the leak. If he wants us dead, he’ll find us.”
“In the twenty years I’ve been with the DOJ, we’ve never lost a witness in protection.”
“You’ve never had anyone like Jonas Klauser on trial.”
; “We’ve had people testify against cartel members, mob bosses, you name it. That’s what we do.”
Arthur let out a harsh laugh. “Testifying against Klauser is the equivalent of testifying against cartel members, mob bosses, and terrorists at once. They’re all his clients.”
“I understand your hesitation, Mr. Maynard. But let me remind you that you and Ms. Durand were part of this criminal enterprise. If you choose not to testify, you will be prosecuted along with the rest of your colleagues.”
“Even though we were the ones who leaked all the data?” Zoe asked, frowning. “That seems unfair.”
Holden shrugged. “I’m sorry you feel it’s unfair, Ms. Durand. But in our country, we don’t look kindly on people who aid and abet terrorists.”
“Would we be together?” Arthur asked. “In witness protection, I mean.”
“It would be safer if you weren’t.”
“We have to be together,” Zoe said. She looked at Arthur, pleading. “Arthur, please. I can’t be alone again. Not after everything. You’re all I’ve ever had.”
“I won’t leave you,” Arthur said, his voice stern. “There must be another way.”
“There is one other option,” Moyes spoke up.
They both looked at him hopefully.
“You testify. But you do it out in the open. You give interviews. You go public. You become the Edward Snowdens of the offshore banking business.”
“That’s crazy,” Arthur said. “That will only put us in greater danger.”
“Will it? They know who you are. They know you were the leak. If you become heroes—celebrities, really—it makes it harder for them to kill you. And you could hire private security. You wouldn’t be totally unprotected.”
For a moment, they were all silent. Zoe glanced back at the balcony. The sky was bright now, a clear, cold, cerulean blue. Soon, the shops on rue de Rivoli would fill with holiday shoppers. A line at the Louvre would accumulate. Tourists would walk through the Tuileries with hot chocolate and coffee. The big Ferris wheel at the Place de la Concorde would spin.
The Banker’s Wife Page 26
