I braced myself for a blow, poised to take advantage of any opportunity to go on the offensive. But it never came. Instead, his tone low, whispery, and menacing, filled with sheer wrath, the man commanded, “You stay out of this, you hear? Stay out of it!” Furiously, my mind flitted through various options—kick, twist, strike—but I found myself stymied as much by Kali’s presence as by the suddenness of the attack. I was consumed with anger and overwhelmed with rage but also an unaccustomed terror—terror for that panicked, helpless child on the floor. Pinned between the assailant’s great bulk and the sweating wall, I struggled grimly in silence, but he had the advantage of size and weight and muscle.
Plus, there was Kali. Her presence and her vulnerability unmanned me, if that was the right word. My own vulnerability infuriated me. I heard my father’s voice in my ear: Fear is for cowards. I gathered my strength for a vicious kick, not caring what Kali might think.
Chapter 10
And then, suddenly, the overhead light snapped back on, and I saw Leo’s tall frame silhouetted against the dark stairwell, his eyes taking in the scene in one glance. His hand shot involuntarily to his waist too, and he moved forward slowly; I recalled his military training and unclenched my fists.
“What’s all this, then?” he asked calmly.
The man threw me toward Leo. I staggered and would have fallen had Leo not reached out to steady me. I heard my attacker’s footsteps receding into the blackness behind me and saw Leo’s eyes narrow in calculation. I knew, without a word being spoken, that he wanted to abandon his burden—me—and go off in hot pursuit. Just as I wanted to abandon my burden—Kali—and join him. But common sense prevailed, and he drew me against him in a bear hug instead. I forced myself to go limp against him, trying hard to be a damsel in distress. Then he bent to lift Kali off the floor and held her in a tight embrace too. She started to cry.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked me.
I put an arm around Kali, pretending to swipe away tears on my own face. “He pushed her down and grabbed me,” I said, angry at the shakiness of my voice. “He told me to ‘stay out of this’—whatever that means—and then you . . .” At the mention of Leo’s fortuitous appearance, I let my voice falter. Kali’s sobs grew louder.
He sighed, and I remembered his four sisters. He must be a champion at dealing with sobbing women. Sure enough, he gathered us both into his arms. “There, there,” he murmured. “It’s all right, motek. It’s okay now.”
Forgetting my damsel-in-distress act, I drew away again and smacked him lightly on the arm. “I’m fine,” I said.
Leo’s face cleared, and he smiled at me. “And she’s back,” he said, sounding relieved.
Kali glared at me. “Don’t be mean to him,” she said.
As I spooned up my soup—nothing like a good scare to send the appetite surging—I eyed Leo thoughtfully. Keep out of what, exactly? Leo and his Queen Katherine Parr obsession? Preposterous. Sheikh Abdullah and his financial affairs? Hmm.
But then why had Leo automatically reached for a gun when he saw me struggling with the man?
Kali chattered nonstop—apparently, fear loosened her tongue, just as adrenaline quick-started my appetite—and treated us to an endless soliloquy on stupid college applications (“I’m too dumb to get into a good school, and who cares anyway?”) and the stupid school that had kicked her out (“I was only selling weed to high school kids; it’s not as if I was forcing heroin on kindergartners”) and, of course, her new hero: Leo. “Wasn’t he wonderful?” she asked me, suddenly looking like that sunny child again for one brief moment.
Leo grinned and encouraged her while I listened absently, too caught up in my own thoughts to pay much attention.
Once again, my father’s voice echoed in my head. We had been preparing for a rock climb in the Haut Atlas region of Morocco; the climb was highly rated for difficulty, and I was frightened, looking up at the unyielding crags and terrifyingly steep ascent my father intended. “I don’t think I want to try this,” I said, starting to undo my roping.
“Fear is for cowards,” my father said dismissively. “Now, do you want to go, and should I find myself a braver companion?”
I went.
I was twelve years old at the time.
So, in the end, I never found out why Leo had thought my story of Baby Mary’s tragic death so amusing. He promised to put Kali in an Uber back to the flat, and I returned to my office in a daze of exhaustion. I knew this feeling from my years of adventuring with my father: A rush of adrenaline was always followed by an urgent desire for food and sustenance and then an equally urgent desire for sleep. I was in the sleep phase now.
I staggered through the remainder of the day and Ubered home, too tired for the tube and a little uneasy about the thought of being pressed up against all those strangers’ bodies. Kali was there but had sunk back into a sullen silence, for which I could be only grateful. I fell into a deep sleep on my bed without even taking my shoes off, only to be awakened a few hours later by the chirp of my cell phone.
“Amy here,” I said groggily.
“‘Amy here’? Is that how you always answer the phone?” Leo.
“No, I . . .” I sat up and tried to brush some sleep from my eyes. “How did you get this number?”
He ignored that, of course. “Did he have an accent?”
“Did . . . what?”
“Your attacker. Did he have an accent?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, thinking back. “Yes, he did.”
“Middle Eastern? Mediterranean?”
“No. Russian, I think.”
“Russian?” Leo sounded surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, Leo. I lived in the bloody country for five bloody years.”
“Huh.”
“Is that what you woke me up for?” I asked, annoyed now.
“No, of course not,” he said.
Pause.
I said, with exaggerated politeness, “Then may I ask what the purpose of your call is?”
“Oh. Right.” Now he sounded distracted. “I called to tell you why I . . . well, never mind that now. See you around, all right?”
And he hung up.
“Was that Leo?” Kali sounded animated again for the first time since lunch. “I wanted to talk to him and thank him again.”
“Go to sleep,” I said, and put the pillow over my head.
Chapter 11
“Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk,” I Googled.
It was the next day, and to quiet the butterflies in my stomach, I was killing time at work before our meeting with Sheikh Abdullah’s sons. And I was curious. If the Duchess had been Katherine Parr’s bestie, so much so that she took in the baby after Tom Seymour’s death, then why had she let the poor infant die so quickly and, apparently, anonymously? Babies died all the time back then, of course, but still . . .
Catherine Willoughby, as Leo would say, was an interesting woman. I wondered if he had a crush on her as well; he seemed enamored of all the Tudor women. Perhaps he cried out the names of long-dead queens when he was making love.
With effort, I went back to Catherine Willoughby. She became one of the wealthiest heiresses of her generation at age seven, when her father died. Two years later, the King’s brother-in-law Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, purchased her wardship from the King and became her legal guardian. There were rumors that Brandon planned to marry her off to his ten-year-old son, but then Brandon’s wife (the sister of Henry VIII) died, and Catherine’s glittering fortune—and perhaps the witty, high-spirited Catherine as well—became an irresistible temptation to Brandon himself.
Just six weeks after his wife’s death, the forty-nine-year-old Brandon married the fourteen-year-old Catherine. By all accounts, the marriage was successful. She bore him two sons, and the union made Suffolk one of the greatest magnates in all of England. Catherine, who was known for her sharp tongue and even sharper intelligence, was a youthful and stimulating co
mpanion for the clever Brandon in his later years.
She and Katherine Parr became very close friends, bonding in part over their shared dedication to religious reformation, and she was frequently at court. In fact, when Brandon died in August 1545, the fickle King was alleged to be considering Catherine—still in her midtwenties and quite attractive—for the dubious position of his seventh wife. (He was annoyed with Katherine Parr at the time.)
So it was not surprising that she was made guardian of Baby Mary upon Tom Seymour’s death. What did surprise me, though, was her strong and very public resentment of the child—which seemed quite miserly for such a wealthy and cultured woman. As the Queen’s daughter, Lady Mary required a household of her own, including a governess, rockers, a wet nurse, laundresses, and various other assorted servants. But no money accompanied the child to pay for these heavy expenses. The Crown had seized Tom’s holdings upon his execution, and the Duchess complained bitterly to anyone who would listen.
The Lord Protector Edward Seymour, Mary’s uncle and bitter enemy of her late but unlamented father, showed no interest whatsoever in funding his niece’s upkeep. Eventually the Duchess appealed to William Cecil, then a prominent courtier, and he intervened on her behalf. Reading her letter to Cecil, I was struck by her cold references to “the Queen’s child,” as she called poor Mary, and by her obvious resentment of the little girl, which infused the entire missive.
Why, I wondered, had she been so bitter about the burden of one orphaned baby? As the mother of boys and the best friend of the child’s mother, shouldn’t she have felt some warmth toward the tiny girl? And she was one of the wealthiest women in the realm. Couldn’t she have paid Lady Mary’s expenses out of her petty cash if she wanted?
It all struck a discordant note, and I found myself eager to get Leo’s take on the matter.
In fact, I was eager to see Leo again, period. And that struck a discordant note too. My last job review at IDC had described me as “hard, heedless, suspicious,” and even though I had submerged that personality in Amy the banker, I had already recognized Leo for what he was: an easy, self-assured charmer hiding behind a mask of Hugh Grant–ish Britishism.
But still, I wondered about the lost baby.
“Amy,” Kristen R. said, and I started, quickly closing my computer. “Kareem and Nasir are on their way up. Can you get everyone some coffee, please?”
Bitch, I thought automatically. But I nodded meekly as I gathered the coffee cups and made my way into the conference room.
The men stood when I entered the room, and I smiled at them.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said hopefully. “I’ve really enjoyed working with your father over the last two—”
“Amy, please put the coffee down so we can get started,” Audrey interrupted.
The men remained standing until I seated myself, and I was pleased by this touch of courtesy. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Kareem, the older brother, began with a long litany of pleasantries. They were so pleased to meet us. We had performed so many services for the family for so many years. We had shown our loyalty in so many ways. . . .
Accustomed to florid Arabic oratorical style from my time in Riyadh and Amman with my father, I listened patiently and waited for my turn. But when Kareem finished, Audrey quelled me with a warning look and began her own little speech.
Audrey was calculating and selective with her considerable personal charm, but when she turned it on, there was no escaping its brilliance. The al-Saud family were our most valued (and valuable, I thought cynically) clients. We held them in the highest esteem, blah blah blah. She failed to mention that this particular sheikh was a very minor family member, of course—which was why I had inherited him.
Nasir, the younger brother, said not a word. Both men wore conservative, Western-style business suits, beautifully cut and fitted, with Hermès ties and what I judged to be thousand-dollar shoes. Maybe multithousand-dollar shoes—I was no expert. As Kareem stretched out a hand to take the coffee, I noticed that his nails were perfectly buffed and manicured. I hid my own uneven, uncolored nails in my lap.
I turned my mind back to the conversation. Kareem appeared to be, at last, leading up to actually saying something. “These developments are, of course, trivial.” He waved a hand dismissively. “We have nothing to hide.”
“Of course not,” Audrey murmured, and Kristen nodded in agreement. Nobody looked at me, so I didn’t bother nodding.
“But we have enemies in the kingdom,” he went on. “And in America too. The godless among you do not have the grace of Allah.”
Audrey’s smile froze momentarily, too fleeting for the men to notice.
Now we’re getting to it, I thought.
“We appreciate your discretion,” Kareem concluded. “Indeed, your value to us lies in your discretion.” He sat back, as if some very important message had been delivered, and took an appreciative sip of coffee.
An uncomprehending glance flew between Audrey and Kristen.
I understood exactly what he meant, and was thinking furiously when Kareem turned to me. “Ms. Schumann, you of course have been my father’s most trusted emissary. We are especially grateful for your discretion.”
Uh-oh. We were in London, where Swiss-style banking secrecy laws did not apply. If the FBI wanted information, I was pretty sure we had to give it to them. Surely Kareem knew this.
“Yes, of course,” I said, sounding shy even to my own ears. “I am afraid, though, Sheikh Kareem, that if the FBI issues subpoenas—”
Both Audrey and Kristen cut in simultaneously.
“You can count on us,” Audrey said.
“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Kristen said.
His dark eyes rested on me for a moment. “We are tender among ourselves and our family,” he said slowly. His very British English was flavored with an undercurrent of Middle Eastern intonation, like Leo’s, but it had a very different effect on me. I had heard similar statements from Arab men before. They were usually followed by a chilling commentary on what happened to those who violated their circle of trust.
Now he fell silent, obviously calculating that I knew where he was going, and I nodded my head in submission. Message received.
But Audrey, cheerful and completely oblivious, said, “You’re in good hands with us, sir. Kristen Rivers and I will be handling this matter personally, and she has a source at the FBI. Why don’t you fill us in on that conversation, Kristen?”
Kristen’s expression was the perfect combination of concern and reassurance. Today she had captured her shining blond hair, which she usually wore down, into a modest bun at the back of her head and had on a knee-length dress with Puritan-style collar and sleeves. She always knew exactly how to dress for the occasion.
“I went to school with one of the FBI folks, and he says the investigation is in its early days. He thinks that—”
“And he will make it all go away?” Kareem interrupted.
“Not exactly,” Kristen said, exchanging glances with Audrey. “But he tells me—”
Kareem stood up. “Thank you for dealing with this matter. Those who serve the House of Saud—and those who do not—will always receive the appropriate recognition.”
I felt a small shiver run down my spine. Again, I understood exactly what he meant. Audrey and Kristen beamed.
Glancing at his brother, who still had not said a word, Kareem added, “I am delighted that we are, as always, in perfect unity. My father will be most grateful for your service.”
And most vengeful if we fail, I understood. As they stood over us, I realized that the silent Nasir was almost a head taller and several stones heavier than his older brother. He was built like a tank. The muscle? I wondered.
Audrey stood up too. “Sheikh Kareem,” she said, “your family are honored and valued partners of Atlantic Bank.”
“Indeed,” he said. “You will do well to remember that.”
And the t
wo men walked out the door.
“Well!” Audrey said, falling back into her chair, all the charm turned off like a light switch. “What a mess you’ve gotten us into, Amy.”
Me? I stared at her indignantly, too gobsmacked to defend myself.
“Kristen, I’d like to socialize some ideas with you and the senior team. Can you ping everyone for a pop-up meeting at five?”
“Sure,” Kristen said.
I said cautiously, “I think we need to bring the lawyers in on this. And maybe hire some protection for the office.”
“Why?” Kristen asked. “They couldn’t have been more pleasant.”
“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly, wishing that I could put aside my mask and shout at my oblivious colleagues: They were threatening us! We should be afraid! Very afraid!
“I don’t know what meeting you were in,” Audrey drawled. “But I didn’t hear any threats. Did you, Kristen?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in their corner of the world,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, instead of infuriated at their blindness. “And I think that was language, coded language, that Arab men use to refer to—”
Audrey cut in, shaking her head. “Honestly, Amy, sometimes I really wonder about you. Kristen, please arrange that team meeting.”
They both looked at me.
“It might be best if you didn’t attend,” Audrey said.
In case they decided to throw me under the bus. I understood that code too. In silence, I walked back to my desk and sat down. I couldn’t think of a single thing to do, other than update my Stupid Jargon list with “socialize some ideas” and “pop-up meeting.” My favorites so far were “tease that out” and “noodle on that,” but “socialize some ideas” was pretty good.
I put my head in my hands. The sheikh, Leo . . . With a pang of special pain, I remembered Kali. How had so much gone wrong in so little time? I knew why I was letting Leo stay in my life, or at least part of the reason. I wanted to know why he was chasing after Jules and why he thought I had anything to do with her. And I knew why I had accepted (very temporarily) the unwanted burden of Kali. I was a screw-up at her age too, and it was only my father’s penchant for laughing off my misdeeds as daring adventures that saved me from her fate.
The Long-Lost Jules Page 6
