The Dark Tide

by Andrew Gross

  The rabbi said his final prayers. Karen’s grip tightened on their hands. Her life came back to her. The day they met. How they fell in love. How one day she had said to herself he was the one.

  Charlie, the captain—at the helm of the boat sailing in the Caribbean. Waving to her from their private cove at the end.

  Her blood coursed with the warming current of eighteen years.

  “Now it is our custom to pay our last respects to the dead by throwing a handful of dirt, reminding us that all life is transitory and humble before God.”

  Her father came up. He took the shovel from the rabbi and tossed a small patch over the casket. Her mom, too. Then Charlie’s mother Margery, his brother steadying her arm. Then Rick and Paula.

  Then Samantha, who did it in a quick, wounded manner, turning away, She handed the shovel to Alex, who stood over the grave for a long time, finally facing Karen and shaking his young head. “I can’t, Mom…. No.”

  “Honey.” Karen squeezed him tighter. “Yes you can.” Who could blame him? “It’s your father, baby, whatever he’s done.”

  Finally he picked up the shovel and tossed in the dirt, sniffling back tears.

  Then it was Karen’s turn. She picked up the shovelful of soil. She had already said her good-byes to him. What more was there to say?

  I did love you, Charlie. And I know you loved me, too.

  She tossed it in.

  So it was over. Their life together. I just buried my husband today, Karen said to herself. Finally. Irrevocably. She had earned the right to say that.

  Everyone came up and gave her a hug, and the three of them waited a moment while the rest started to go down the hill. Karen looped her hand through Alex’s arm. She wrapped her other around Samantha’s shoulder, bringing her close. “One day you’ll forgive him. I know it’s hard. He came back, Sam. He stood outside on the street and watched us at your graduation. You’ll forgive him. That’s what life is all about.”

  As they headed back down the hill, she saw him under a leafy elm, standing off to the side. He was wearing a navy sport jacket and looked nice. Still with his cane.

  Their gazes met.

  Karen’s eyes filled with a warm feeling she hadn’t felt in many years.

  “C’mon,” she told the kids, “there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  As they approached him, Alex glanced at her, confused. “We already know Lieutenant Hauck, Mom.”

  “I know you do, hon,” Karen said. She lifted her sunglasses and smiled at him. “I want you to meet him again. His name is Ty.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Each book is a mirror reflecting the outside world, and I’d like to say thanks to the following, all of whom have brought the outside world to life for me far more vividly through the creation of The Dark Tide:

  Mark Schwarzman, Roy and Robin Grossman, and Gregory Kopchinsky, for their help on hedge funds and the movement of money across continents—all aboveboard, naturally.

  Kirk Dauksavage, Rick McNees, and Pete Carroll of River-glass, designers of an advanced security software far more sophisticated than that portrayed herein, for their help with information about ways the Internet is mined for national security. As one character says, “I feel safer for it.”

  Vito Collucci Jr., an ex–Stamford, Connecticut, police detective turned cable news consultant, and an author in his own right, for his help on police and investigative matters.

  Liz and Fred Scoponich, for who you are and for the assists on classic Mustangs, too.

  Simon Lipskar of Writers House for his support, and my team at William Morrow: Lisa Gallagher, Lynn Grady, Debbie Stier, Pam Jaffee, Michael Barrs, Gabe Robinson, and, mostly, David Highfill, who throws me just enough praise to make me believe I know what I’m doing now and then, and enough direction to steer clear of my worst traits. And also Amanda Ridout and Julia Wisdom over at HarperCollins in London.

  Maureen Sugden, once again, for her diligence and steadfastness in waging the good fight against italics.

  To my wife, Lynn, with me every step of the way, and who always lifts me up to do my best.

  But mostly to Kristen, Matt, and Nick, whom I am more proud of now, for who they’ve become as adults in the world, than all the dance recitals, college acceptances, and squash matches of their youth. Your reflection is on every page.

  Excerpt from RECKLESS

  PROLOGUE

  London.

  Beep, beep! Beep, beep!”

  Amir, “Marty” al-Bashir’s six-year-old son, raced his motorized Formula One model around the dining room table, almost crashing it into Anna, the Lebanese housemaid, as she brought out their Sunday lunch of flatbread and spiced lamb.

  “Amir, watch out!” his mom, Sheera, yelled. “You’ll run Anna over. Marty, is it not possible for you to tell your son to stop?”

  “Amir, listen to your mother,” Marty called from the den, distracted. He and his older son, Ghassan— they called him Gary—were crouched in front of the wide-screen TV in the midst of a crucial football match. Manchester United versus Chelsea. The match was scoreless with only seconds remaining in the first half, and Man U was his son’s favorite team— they had just acquired Antonio Valencia, his favorite winger and the hottest foot in the game.

  “Oh, no, look!” Gary shouted as Marty focused back on the screen. A Chelsea attacker had curled a thirty-meter beauty just inside the left post, an inch beyond the Manchester goalie’s outstretched dive.

  “Damn, now look what you’ve made me miss, Sheera,” Marty groaned, deflated, “a goal!”

  “A goal, big deal. Your son is driving that thing around the house like Jenson Button. Amir, listen . . .” Sheera’s voice grew firm. “If you don’t stop this instant, you can forget about going to Universal Studios when we are in L.A. Do you hear?”

  As if on autopilot, the model race car came to a stop. From the floor, Amir caught his father’s amused gaze and grinned sheepishly. “Yes, I hear, mama.”

  “Come on, boys, your mom’s gone to a lot of trouble for us. Let’s eat.” Marty rose and the family drew chairs around the sleek van der Rohe table in the stylishly decorated town house.

  Outside, the view from the wide third-floor window of their fashionable Mayfair Georgian was over Hyde Park, among the most desirable views in town. The home cost close to six million pounds, but as the chief investment officer of the Royal Saudi Partnership, a sovereign fund of Marty’s native Saudi Arabia, it was hardly more than a rounding error on the daily tallies of one of the largest troves of investment capital in the world.

  “Marty,” which al-Bashir had been called for years, was simply an Americanized form of Mashhur, his birth name, given to him in his undergraduate days when he had studied under Whiting and McComb at the University of Chicago and followed up with stints in portfolio strategy at Goldman and Reynolds Reid, and in private equity at Blackstone in New York.

  It was only back home in his native country that Marty was called anything else.

  Now he oversaw a giant fund with interests that stretched to every point on the globe and every conceivable type of asset. Stocks. Mezzanine capital. Currencies. CDOs. Complex derivatives. They also had vast real estate holdings— in New York’s Rockefeller Center and London’s own Trafalgar Square. When the price of oil rocketed, they bought up ethanol-producing sugarcane fields in Brazil. When the commodity fell, they bought up offshore U.S. development leases and massive tankers. Royal Saudi’s holdings were more than a trillion dollars. Their hands were in everything. In times of crisis, they had even been called on to prop up many national treasuries around the world.

  He and Sheera had met in the U.S. while he was at Reynolds and she, a daughter of a prominent law professor from Beirut, was studying economics at Columbia. They’d been married for twelve years. The job had given him ease— most would say luxury— and over time, they acquired many Western ways. They had a flat on the Côte d’Azur, a penthouse in the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York; they took the
family skiing at Gstaad and Aspen; Gary and Amir were enrolled in the finest schools. His only regret was that, to appease the royal family’s wishes, his wife had had to give up her own career to raise her family. Sometimes he wished that despite his rise to the top of the financial world and the important responsibilities that had been bestowed on him, if only she could handle the investments and he could manage the kids, both their home and the Saudi royal portfolio would be in better hands.

  Sunday was their traditional family meal. Afterward, they might head a few blocks away to Hyde Park and kick the football around a bit. On the way back, they might stroll along Shepherd Market window-shopping the fine antiques and new fashions. These days, with teleconferencing and the financial network set up here, he jetted home barely twice a year, mostly to see his folks. He had been away from Riyadh for so many years, distanced himself from their customs, that Marty pretty much thought of the royals as clients now rather than brethren. And he knew, because of the results he produced, his overseers looked the other way.

  “Okay, who wants first?” Marty picked up a plate and looked around. “The cook!” he said proudly, and spooned some of the stewed lamb over the yogurt and bread and handed it to his wife, serving her first in the Western way. If his parents ever saw him, they’d be horrified.

  The trill of his cell phone sounded from somewhere in the house. His office.

  Sheera shook her head and groaned. “Now on Sundays too?” “I’ll make it short. Promise.” Marty got up. “You just make sure you save me some of that lamb.” He winked a warning at Amir, whose appetite seemed to never end.

  With the vast amount of activity Royal Saudi controlled there was no such thing as boundaries when it came to nights or weekends. Their interests ran every day, 24/7, across the globe. Though the aroma of lamb and fresh baked bread made ignoring the call momentarily tempting.

  Marty followed the ring to his office and shut the door, stepping over the cables to the Wii video game attached to the TV. Gary’s Christmas gift— another Western concession! The BlackBerry was vibrating on the coffee table and Marty sank himself onto the couch, tightrope-walking over the brightly colored Lego Transformer that had been left on the floor; this one was Amir’s.

  Never ends, he sighed.

  He expected it to be Len Whiteman, his second at the firm, but Marty’s mood shifted when he checked the digital readout and saw “Private Caller.” His stomach clenched. Cautiously, he drew the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “I hope this call finds you well, Mashhur al-Bashir.”

  The use of Marty’s Saudi name jolted him. He knew immediately who it was. The first call had come six months ago, preparing him. He had just been hoping against hope, as time marched on, as their lives grew and prospered and became more acclimated, that the real call would never come.

  “I am well,” Marty replied, his throat dry, returning the greeting in Arabic.

  “Our sons and daughters around the world require your service, Mashhur al-Bashir. Are you prepared to do what is asked of you?”

  Marty thought to himself that it had been so long. His views, passions, had all been so different then. Never religious, or even political. It was simply more about pride in his culture. The dismissive manner in which his nation had been treated by the West. They had given him his start, his education. Now he had lived among them for years and had changed.

  Six months ago the first call had come. Reminding him of his duty. What he was expected to do. In a flash, all the prosperity in his life and the good fortune he had earned seemed a universe away. There was no turning away from this. He realized he owed them everything. All his good fortune. He had made his bed a long time ago.

  “Yes,” Marty al-Bashir answered dutifully. “Good. The tide of events is evolving,” the caller said, “don’t you agree? Global opportunities have shifted. We, here, are not happy with certain signs. We feel it is time for a change in direction. In strategy. Do you understand?”

  “I have a new plan already drawn up,” Marty replied. He knew the ramifications that would result from it and he closed his eyes.

  “Then begin it,” the caller said, “starting tomorrow. Execute your job, Mashhur al-Bashir. The rest is already set.” The caller paused a second. “Shall we say, the planes are in the air.”

  They hung up, the sounds of his family, laughing, returning from outside. Marty remained on the couch for a while.

  All he knew and had grown used to was about to change.

  He got up and stepped over to the window, accidentally kicking over his son’s Transformer, the Lego pieces flying about. “Damn.”

  Tomorrow, the world would wake up, go to school, to work, laugh, love, eat with their family, everything seeming the same. But by day’s end there would be a change like the world had never seen.

  He bent down and picked up his son’s broken Transformer, the brightly colored pieces all around.

  “God, help us all,” Marty al-Bashir muttered in perfect English.

  CHAPTER ONE

  They entered the house through the sliding glass doors in the basement, which Becca, their fifteen­year­old, sometimes left ajar to sneak in friends at night.

  Upstairs, April Glassman stirred in her bed. She always had an ear for noises late at night. The curse of having a teenager. Marc could go on snoozing forever, through fire alarms, she would joke, but April had a built-in antenna for the sounds of Becca tiptoeing in past curfew or Amos, their goldendoodle, on guard at the living room window, scratching at the glass over a late-night deer or squirrel.

  The house was a large, red-brick Georgian at the end of a private drive off Cat Rock Road in backcountry Greenwich. Every bend in the wood seemed to magnify at night. She opened her eyes and checked the time on the TV cable box. Two thirteen a.m. She lay there for a few seconds, listening. She definitely heard something— creaks on the floorboards, muffled voices— in the foyer or on the stairs.

  Suddenly Amos started barking. “Marc . . .” She nudged her husband. “Honey, what?” Marc Glassman groaned, mashing his pillow into a ball and rolling over.

  She leaned over and shook his arm. “I heard something.”

  “Probably just Amos. Maybe he spotted a deer. You know those bastards never decide to come out before two a.m.”

  “No,” she said, alarmed. “I heard voices.” “Okay, okay . . .” Marc exhaled, giving in. He opened his eyes and took a peek at the clock. “Grrr . . . I’m sure it’s just Becca . . .”

  Their daughter now had a boyfriend at the high school, a junior on the wrestling team, who drove, introducing a whole new set of complications to their lives. Lately she’d been sneaking out after the two of them had gone to sleep, or on weekends, sneaking in her friends at all hours of the night.

  “No. It’s a Sunday, Marc,” April replied, recalling how she had kissed her daughter good night hours ago and left her curled up in bed with Facebook going strong and a chemistry textbook on her lap.

  “Not anymore . . .” Groggily, he sat up, rubbing a hand across his face, flicking on the light. “I was just gonna get up and check out the overnights anyway.”

  As the chief equities trader at Wertheimer Grant, one of Wall Street’s oldest firms, it had been months since he slept a whole night through. Singapore opened at midnight, Australia an hour later. Europe and Russia got going at four. Six months ago he might’ve made it undisturbed till morning. But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Now the bottom had fallen out of the market. The whole subprime mess, Fannie and Freddie reeling, AIG. The banks teetering. Not to mention the company’s stock: a year ago it was over eighty and he and April could have gone off and planted tomatoes somewhere for the rest of their lives. Last Friday it had closed at twelve! It would take him another decade to recoup. Immediately flashing to his positions, his stomach wound into its usual two a.m. knot.

  Now April was hearing voices . . . “I’ll go take a look.”

  In the last months, April had watched as her husband dropped ten pou
nds from the stress. She knew that something was wrong. She knew the firm was hurting and how much they were relying on him. How much he was expected to produce. Marc never shared much about his positions anymore. The pressure on him was crazy.

  She leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder. “Honey, will this ever go back to normal?”

  He threw off the covers and grabbed his robe. “This is the new normal.”

  That’s when they both heard another noise.

  A creak on the stairs. Marc put a finger to his lips for her to keep quiet.

  Then another. Closer. A knife slicing through them.

  Someone was coming up the stairs. “Marc . . .” April caught his eyes. Her look was laden with worry. “Amos stopped barking . . .”

  He nodded, feeling the same thing inside. “I know.”

  The next creak seemed to come right from the upstairs landing. April’s heart skipped a beat. Her husband’s gaze was unmistakable.

  Someone was in the house. “Just stay there,” he said, nodding to the bed, raising a hand for her to stay silent.

  They all knew about the recent rash of home break-ins going on in the backcountry. They were all just talking about it last Saturday night with the Rudenbachs at Mediterraneo. Marc listened closely at the door. They never put on the alarm. What the hell did they even have the damned thing for, he’d asked himself a hundred times. Just wasting all that stupid money. Truth was, he couldn’t even remember the damn code— or even where the panic button was.

  “Marc . . .”

  He turned. He stared at April’s freckled face, her soft, round eyes, hair raised in a nighttime ponytail. Except now, he saw only fear in it. And helplessness. “Becca, Evan . . . ,” she whispered.

  Their rooms were just down the hall. He nodded firmly. “I’ll go check it out.”

  He took a step, and suddenly the bedroom door flew open. Two men, wearing ski masks and plain blue work uniforms, pushed their way into their room.