The Kingfisher Secret

by AnonYMous

  “We may never call on you.” Sapozhnik touched Anthony’s wrist, as they left the Champagne Room. “But we may call on you.”

  Elena could not make eye contact with Anthony. They always call.

  * * *

  —

  If her soon-to-be ex-husband was unsatisfied with his new situation he did not say so, not in the Champagne Room and not later that night in their elegant suite upstairs at the Connaught. He slept soundly and woke up delighted to be recapitalized. The money would flow through the banks and his new partners would be cloaked behind a very modern system of private equity holding companies. His lawyers and their lawyers would go through everything, and absolutely no one would have access to the origins of anything.

  “It’s a beautiful deal,” Anthony said, in the morning, in the fine old lobby of the Connaught while they waited for his car to arrive.

  “I’m so happy for you.”

  “We did this together, remember? Those boys were your connections.”

  “Not really, Tony. They were friends of friends. If it were not you, I never could have put it together. No one could have.”

  “You can’t ever tell anyone about that meeting.”

  “I know, Tony.”

  “No one rescues Anthony Craig.”

  “Never.”

  He looked out the doors of the Connaught. The car would be here any moment, to take them to the airport. Anthony could lie to her, knowing she knew it was a lie. She had felt him at the table beside her, trembling, when Sapozhnik outlined the terms of their arrangement. If he were to break this contract, Mustela Capital would use every financial and legal instrument at their disposal to destroy him and to destroy his family. They would seize his assets. They would release details about him. In the Champagne Room Elena had waited for Anthony to squint and frown and lean over the table and ask, “What details?”

  But Anthony did not ask.

  “Mr. Craig.” The manager performed a little bow. “Your town car has arrived, sir.”

  A powerful man, a fully capitalized man, does not hurry. Anthony nodded to the manager. “I never thought of it this way, the way what’s-his-face thinks of it, the gay one.”

  Elena waited.

  “What did he say?” Anthony put on his version of an Israeli accent. “ ‘We do not care about cars. The only product we care about is you.’ I like that. It’s true, you know. He’s on to something, that bald fucker.”

  36

  MONTREAL, 2016

  On a television in Houston Avenue Bar & Grill, at Gate 77 of Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, a bearded man in a bowtie said Anthony Craig would never be elected.

  “Listen. This candidate never wanted to win.”

  It was difficult to hear anything else over the other televisions playing a Montreal Canadiens hockey game, the bilingual airport announcements, and their neighbors’ conversations at the bar. Grace and William had to read the closed-captioning.

  “Imagine you own—you own—thirty-five percent of the American electorate, and a good piece of Canada and Europe. We’re talking millions of angry and aggrieved people with money to spend, who believe every word he says. Cars? Who cares about cars? Only dictators and rock stars want his ridiculous bulletproof cars. It’s his ideas they like, his simple crazy rage. They’re breaking away from the rest of the country and Anthony Craig is building an asylum for them. He’ll be CEO of Craig Broadcasting. It’s already in the works.”

  “Could that be true?” William held the rim of his beer against his temple, as though it helped him think.

  Grace shrugged. “He might not want to win. But a lot of other people want him to, powerful people.”

  The CNN interviewer, a blonde woman in a peach jacket, expressed some cynicism. Why would anyone go to all this trouble to lose?

  “Look at our current president: courtly, intelligent, careful. Like him or not, he couldn’t achieve a thing! It’s impossible. The presidency is designed to be the worst job in the world. When he loses in a few days, Anthony Craig and his army of angry white people from rural and suburban America, what media elites like you call ‘flyover states,’ will own this country. Now that is Anthony Craig’s real power.”

  The interviewer accused her guest of creating a conspiracy theory. Grace swiveled on her stool to look through the bar and into the US departures area.

  “There is no point looking, Grace. It’s their job to be invisible when they want to be.” William pointed up at the television set. “I do hope that man is right.”

  “Me too.”

  “Your book won’t be worth nearly as much if he doesn’t win.”

  “But fewer people will want to kill my mom.”

  It was silent between them now, and there was only the Christmas muzak, hockey and CNN, cutlery-on-plates, and weather talk in the airport bar. Why did Canadians act surprised when it snowed in November?

  Grace had sent an email to Elena, copying her two assistants. I know you’re busy but seeing you, even for an hour, is life or death. Then she searched hotels and restaurants in midtown Manhattan. Her severance money would not last but she had never seen so much of it in her checking account at one time. She booked a late dinner at Upland, where the fancy writers ate, and hunted the Internet for a romantic boutique hotel. There was one in the Bowery she had always lusted for after seeing it in a travel magazine at the dentist’s office.

  They announced pre-boarding, seven gates away. William downed his beer. Grace abandoned hers.

  Ten minutes into the flight to New York, William was gently snoring against the window. He had warned Grace that airplanes did this to him. While nothing about sharing a bed with a man who snored excited her, there was an animal quality to the sound he made that sent a shiver of anticipation through her. They would have showers after dinner. Then they would slip into the fragrant white sheets with a high thread count. What happened after that didn’t matter a terrible lot. Middle-aged adventure and exploration behind a triple-locked door! The thought of a warm naked body in bed next to her made Grace feel faint with expectation.

  Originally he had clutched his silver computer bag. Now William shifted his body and released it and the bag looked as though it was about to tumble to the floor. Grace eased it off him. It was an international flight so she decided to order a Heineken, to make up for the beer she had not finished. Another woman had asked for one, and Grace could smell the soft skunk of it two rows away.

  Buoyed by this decision, she unzipped William’s bag and looked inside.

  William had the latest, lightest MacBook. On one side of it was a beige folder filled with papers. Grace watched him for a moment, to be sure he was asleep, and then she pulled out the file.

  The top page was in Czech. It looked like a printed news story from the web, with headlines and subheads, a photograph of Elena cut off on the right. William had underlined bits and he had made notes. Despite his messy handwriting Grace recognized the word ledňáček. Kingfisher. The next page and another four below it were similar: printed off websites.

  At the bottom of the pile, clipped together, was a different set of papers. These were official-looking, like a corporate memo or a contract originating in a law office. Grace imagined it was the response to a Czech query for his book about the Arab Spring. The flight attendant in the aisle was taking orders one seat in front of her, in English. It was a Delta flight so the woman was not farting around with Canadian bilingualism.

  The flight attendant was just about to ask Grace what she wanted and Grace was just about to say Heineken and slip the file back into his bag when she spotted her name on the bottom of the first page of the memo. It was there again on the second page, several times. On the third page was a photograph of her, from a failed gossip column she wrote for the Flash between 2011 and 2012. The memo was five pages long and her name appeared constantly: Elliott, Elliott, Elliott, embedded in the Czech. She found her mother’s name. Austin popped out and Florida, National Flash, Elena Craig. Elena Crai
g anonymní spisovatel.

  In brackets, in English: ghostwriter.

  “Madame?” The flight attendant asked again. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Maybe just a tomato juice.”

  “Ice? Squeeze of lemon?”

  “Straight up, please.”

  It was not a long flight: ninety minutes in the air. For a while Grace could not remember the word for this and then she did: dossier. Someone had created an official dossier on her, for this smooth man who pretended to be awkward, who had gone to some trouble to find bad eyeglasses and maybe-hipster sweaters to place him precisely in between adorable and unattractive.

  She turned on the overhead light and took photographs of each of the pages of the dossier. Then she slipped it back in William’s bag and watched him sleep a while longer. His mouth was open and a line of drool rolled down his chin and onto his neck.

  There was a chance Elena would not speak to her. Grace pulled out her own computer and opened the file she had started in Old Montreal and continued writing, inspired by fury and heartbreak. Though her news-writing muscles had atrophied, it did not take long to finish a first draft.

  They were less than twenty minutes from LaGuardia when William began stirring. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. The smile seemed real. She closed her laptop.

  “I dozed off.” He wiped the drool from his chin. “Where are we?”

  “On our descent,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the disappointment in her voice.

  “Sorry. I hate that I conk out. I was a fussy baby and my parents used to take me for a drive to calm me down. It’s likely that simple.”

  Grace reached up and pulled a piece of fluff from his shoulder. “We are fragile creatures.”

  He took her hand and kissed it, and then he laughed like it was the silliest thing he had ever done.

  37

  NEW YORK, 1994

  The tabloid coverage of their divorce had made Elena Craig famous, not only in New York but all over the world. In the two years since she had “caught” Anthony with one of MC Hammer’s back-up dancers, she had launched her own spa business. She was still on the board of Craig International, oversaw the design facility, and remained something like a friend to her ex-husband; they spoke nearly every day, or at least she listened to him speak every day. Some women retreat into the comforts of anonymity, on some beach or in a mountain town, after divorcing a man like Anthony Craig.

  Elena was not permitted.

  So she was not initially surprised when a journalist ambushed her on her way to the ladies’ at the Russian Tea Room. He was overweight and sweaty. “Sorry to do this here, Mrs. Craig, but I’ve been leaving messages with your assistant and nothing.” The man, who spoke with a British accent, had sandy hair and blotches on his face. “Jake Haynes. I’m with the Daily Mail.”

  She took his meaty hand.

  “I’m happy to wait here in the back, Mrs. Craig, until you and your friends are finished tea. Then perhaps we could talk.”

  The magnificent unveiling of the new Craig cars was in two weeks. The designs were supposed to be a secret until then. Her first thought was that someone had leaked photographs to him. “About what, Mr. Haynes?”

  “Your past.”

  In the ladies’ room, Elena ensured she was alone and called Sergei on her cellular phone. He advised her to stay calm, to deny everything, and to keep the journalist in the restaurant as long as possible.

  It was difficult to concentrate on her friends and their gossip. Elena was the only one among them to work, and they found it preposterous that she bothered. Volunteer boards of major artistic institutions they could understand: it was glamorous. There were openings and fundraisers. The messiness of running an expanding business, with employees to train and manage, real estate to contend with, and taxes to pay: why give yourself the headache?

  When their lunch was finished, cheeks kissed, and the next date solidified in their calendars, Elena pretended to go back to the ladies’ room one last time and joined the journalist at his table in the dark.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Haynes?”

  “Ledňáček. I’m sure I’m pronouncing it incorrectly but it’s kingfisher in English, right?”

  As soon as he showed her the files, it was obvious to Elena that someone had leaked them to him. He had a lot more than her code name and all of it was accurate: her recruitment, her parents’ involvement, Jean-Yves de Moulin, her years in Montreal, page after page about Anthony and his relationships with leaders, his own political ambitions. She saw no mention of Sergei and nothing on the bailout of Craig International, but there were files on her mother, code name Vrba, that shocked her.

  This was the first she had heard about Anthony’s daughter, Alina, but she did the math. Alina had been born nine months after their visit to Moscow in 1987. Kristína had a half-sister in Moscow, the daughter of a prostitute.

  “This is fiction, Mr. Haynes.”

  “Can you prove that, Mrs. Craig?”

  Elena laughed. “I believe it is your job to prove this is real, Mr. Haynes. I assure you it is not, and that whoever gave it to you is up to some dirty tricks. If you publish a word of this, my lawyers will destroy you and your newspaper.”

  “That sounds like a threat to me, and right here in the land of the First Amendment.” He sat back, crossed his arms over his belly, and stared at her with a satisfied smirk. It seemed to Elena his neck had more hair on it than his face, so she focused on this and tried to guess his age—fifty-seven?—rather than give in to breathless panic.

  He did not wear a wedding ring. “Do you have children, Mr. Haynes?” she asked, as calmly as she could.

  “I haven’t had that pleasure.”

  “Married?”

  “Three times. I’m currently a bachelor.”

  “Just imagine, then, what it would be like to have a wife and a child who loved you. Imagine what a smear like this would do to them.”

  “I’ve been writing for tabloids since I was twenty, Mrs. Craig. It’s not my job, frankly, to protect spies because it might hurt someone’s feelings.”

  Elena had to will herself to remain at the table, to hold his eye contact, to think clearly. She thought of Kristína, and what it would be like for her in her senior year of high school. How would she manage university, as the daughter of two people charged with treason? Elena thought of the lunch she had just finished, of La Cure Craig, of the car business, of her mother.

  “Spies? Don’t be ridiculous, Mr. Haynes. All I mean is a little human understanding could not hurt.”

  He watched her and said nothing.

  “Your…” Elena had to stop herself from shutting down completely. “Your newspaper, it’s actually going to publish this nonsense?”

  “I’ve not shown it to anyone yet. I wanted you to see it first.”

  When her phone rang, it felt like someone had thrown her a lifeline, a legitimate reason to look away from the journalist. “Hello?”

  “He’s still there?” said Sergei.

  “Yes.”

  “We’re outside. Now, Elenka, we’re your lawyers. Yes? We’re going to invite him to a meeting at La Cure Craig. All we have to do is get him into the car. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay calm. You’re interested in what he has found, where it has come from, but it’s garbage. Garbage, yes?”

  “Absolute garbage.” Elena looked at Jake Haynes and smiled.

  “We’re coming in one minute.”

  “See you then.”

  Elena took a deep breath. “I was meeting my lawyers this afternoon, to go over some real estate transactions with my spa business.”

  “La Cure Craig.”

  “You know it? Would you like to join me? Join us? I would like them to see this, so we know who is out there trying to smear us. Since you’ll get nothing else out of this, journalistically, maybe you can write about your first manicure.”

  The journalist looked up. Se
rgei and his men had arrived.

  * * *

  —

  Two weeks later, Elena learned that Jake Haynes had committed suicide in the Algonquin Hotel with a combination of good scotch, antidepressants, and sleeping pills. Teams went through files in Prague, Moscow, and Montreal to erase what could be erased. They discovered the man who had sold the files to Haynes and he too succumbed to the ravages of alcoholism and mental illness.

  With the relaunch of Anthony’s business, foreign orders of bulletproof Craig sedans and SUVs exploded: first in Russia, then in the Middle East, in China, in Venezuela. A few hip hop stars bought them for their music videos, fans copied them, and it was all Craig International’s automotive division needed to record its first profitable year.

  At the Frankfurt Motor Show in 1995, Anthony Craig met a young model from Moldova, and when he called Elena to tell her about his new girlfriend she just said congratulations and took a long drink of wine.

  38

  NEW YORK, 2016

  In the taxi lineup at LaGuardia, Grace canceled their dinner reservation and booked two single rooms at a Holiday Inn Express. She had gone over everything William had said and done since their first meeting in the lobby of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and now saw everything anew.

  Their driver, whose ID on the dash said Lilesa, pulled into the mist and the rain. Glenn Gould played the Goldberg Variations, something that Grace did not expect to hear in a yellow medallion taxi.

  “Is this the 1981 recording?” William leaned forward.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lilesa.

  “He hums as he plays in this one.”

  “Yes, sir. I like it very much. It is very human.”

  William put his arm around Grace. “Very human,” he said.

  Grace wanted to push him away, to slap him, to interrogate him, to scream in his face. Instead she reached up and touched his hand.