Overseas

by Beatriz Williams

  “When you had that phone call.” I nodded against the side of his chest.

  “So Hollander tried to fob him off, and the chap took a different tack. Said he’d heard about this Laurence chap at Southfield, saw his picture in the Times, didn’t Hollander think he had a strong resemblance to Ashford?”

  “Do you mean he knows?”

  “I don’t know. He pressed Hollander quite hard. Offered him money, and then made a threat or two. He had… he had an odd piece of information he’d come across. A bit of trivia, about my last days in France, which we’re not sure how he could possibly know. But he did. It was enough to send Hollander dialing my number the instant he’d hung up the phone. He had the impression, you see, that this anonymous chap was an interested party.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  I felt the heave of his sigh. “Kate, there are any number of people who have, quite legally and properly, benefited from my presumed death. The current Lord Chesterton, God bless him. Various political characters, for more complicated reasons.” He paused. “Some would argue, if they didn’t know any better, that Flora Hamilton’s children might never have been born, if I’d lived through the war. Which is rubbish.”

  “Her children?”

  “She married soon after the war. Three children; one of them began in politics; you’ll know his name. Bit of a rabble-rouser. His son’s carried on the family tradition.”

  “And all these people would be unhappy to find you alive today?”

  “It hardly seems credible, does it? No one could possibly believe it’s really Julian Ashford, vintage 1895. But we don’t know what else to think. People hear things; they react irrationally. That’s what I’m afraid of.” I felt his face burrow into my hair. “That someone might threaten you, because of me.”

  “Why on earth would someone do that?”

  “To make sure I don’t reveal myself, for one thing.”

  “But you’d never do that.”

  “And how could this mysterious fellow of ours be certain of such a thing?”

  I thought this over. “Do you think he’s the one who sent me the book?”

  “Possibly,” Julian said, in an even tone. “I’d certainly like to find out. Do you still have the packaging?”

  “Yes. It came from a bookstore in Rhode Island. I forget the name. It’s upstairs, in my bag.”

  “Then let’s ring them up.” He paused, and his tone slipped lower. “Or visit. We could sail over in my boat. There’s a lovely hotel in Newport. Owner’s a client of ours.”

  “Mmm.” I fingered his shirt. “But what’s the update today? The phone call?”

  “I met with him, with Hollander, two days ago, as you know. His offices had been ransacked, and a copy of the Post left on his desk, with that Page Six item folded back.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. My brain pivoted dizzily around this piece of information. I glanced at the French doors leading to the garden, almost expecting to see some menacing face pressed against the glass.

  “Yes. Now do you understand why I wanted you up here? It’s not so far-fetched as you think. Clearly the man’s serious. Knows something, or thinks he knows.”

  “But what about security? How did this guy get in? Weren’t there cameras?”

  He shrugged. “Hollander left the door unlocked, of course. Stepped out to deliver a lecture. He says the cameras showed nothing useful, just the usual scrum of students entering and leaving the building. And now that phone call comes in”—he nodded at the telephone—“from a colleague of Hollander’s. Apparently the old chap’s gone missing.”

  “Missing!”

  “Well, not missing exactly. He sent an e-mail to this colleague, saying he’d gone on an unexpected research trip, which isn’t unusual for him; but he left my name and this number, which was odd. So the colleague, quite properly, wanted to know what’s going on. So should I, for that matter.”

  “You don’t… I mean, are we in danger?” I only just got the word out.

  His other arm came up, compressing me. His voice was vehement. “Of course not. Nobody knows about this house, other than Geoff. I’ve taken the greatest pains to keep it secret; the deed’s in the name of an obscure holding company of ours. The perimeter’s alarmed, and the house itself. You’re perfectly safe here, darling, I promise. I shan’t let anyone touch you.”

  “Hollander has the number. The area code…”

  “It’s unlisted. Even if our menacing fellow gets hold of it, he can’t trace us easily. Look, Hollander’s done this before, taken himself off without a word, all quite routine. You mustn’t worry. I’ll try his cell after the conference with my lawyer. Speaking of which”—he frowned, peeling his arm away for a look at his watch—“where is the chap?”

  As if in response, Julian’s cell phone rang.

  “Chin up, darling,” he said, and picked up the phone. “Laurence here. Yes, Daniel? Yes, thanks for calling. Hold on a minute; we’re going into the library. I’ll put you on the speaker.”

  Julian motioned me forward, and I led the way into the library, feeling numb. He had a conference phone on a tripod table near the window; he rummaged through his desk drawer for a cord and hooked up his BlackBerry. “Daniel?” he asked, into the speaker.

  “Right here,” came the lawyer’s voice, and Julian pulled a chair over for me. “How’s the country air, Laurence?”

  “Fine, fine. I’ve got Miss Wilson here, Daniel.”

  “Ms. Wilson. Hello. Daniel Newton. I understand you’ve been thrown to the wolves by those assholes at Sterling Bates.”

  “Um, it’s Kate. Yes, I guess that’s about it,” I said. A mass persisted at the back of my head, heavy and menacing. I glanced upward at Julian, settling himself with swift competent movements into the chair next to me, straddling it backward, running a hand through the dark wheat of his hair. I couldn’t imagine anyone piercing that resolve, deflecting the juggernaut force of him.

  “Watch your language, Daniel,” Julian warned. “She’s got a bit more breeding than those women you consort with.”

  A large laugh exploded from the conference phone. “Ha, ha, ha!” Daniel barked, genuine unself-conscious ha’s, each one individually pronounced. “Sounds like you’ve met your match at last, Laurence. Ha, ha, ha. So, Kate. Tell me what happened. I’m itching for a fight with these… these fine gentlemen at your venerable firm. Ex-firm.”

  I smiled. I found myself liking Daniel Newton. I imagined him at his desk in Manhattan, as a large full-bellied bear of a man, with a printed silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and an old-fashioned gold clip securing his tie to his handmade shirt. The weight in my brain began to ease. “Well, I’ll tell you what happened on my end, Daniel,” I said, “though I can’t tell you what happened on theirs, since they weren’t exactly forthcoming.”

  “Better and better,” he said.

  I told him what I could, from the earliest fracas with Alicia over the ChemoDerma deal, to her strange behavior over the following months, to the laptop incident, to the rumors about trading volume with Southfield, to the actual firing. I threw in what Charlie had learned for good measure. Daniel listened as only a lawyer could: intently and without interruption, except to ask a few clarifying questions.

  “Well, Kate,” he said, “if that’s everything, I think we’ve got a pretty good fu… a pretty good case here. I’d recommend we start by filing a complaint, demanding to see your personnel records, and more specifically the evidence they’ve got against you. It’s an absolute freaking crime you weren’t allowed to see it in the meeting, but they were counting on your inexperience, I guess. You said you signed something? What was it?”

  “Yes, I did,” I said, “but I don’t really know exactly what it said. Some kind of release. I know, I know, it was stupid. Go ahead and give me the lawyer lecture. But I was too mad to care at that point, and they were making these threats, they weren’t going to let me leave the room and I just wanted to get out of there…”
<
br />   “Please understand, Daniel,” Julian broke in, with a voice so cold and deadly I nearly jumped from my chair, “I want these bastards hung out to dry. I want prosecutions.”

  “Oh, I’m just as pissed as you are,” Daniel said. “But it’s up to Kate, right?”

  “Let’s take it slow, okay?” I begged. “I have some friends asking a few questions around work. I’d kind of like to see how that pans out before going all legal on them.”

  There was a little silence from the speaker. “Well, Kate, I’ll hold off a bit if you like. But we can’t wait too long. And just looking over my notes, I have a pretty good guess about what happened. Clearly this Boxer woman was using Kate’s e-mail to send information to one of your guys, Laurence…”

  “Wait just a moment, Daniel…”

  “… knowing Kate’s already been linked to you,” Daniel went on, disregarding him. “I’m assuming, Kate, this wasn’t the first time you left your laptop unattended?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I had no reason to think…”

  “You’re a nice girl, Kate,” he said brusquely, “so you never even dreamed anyone would fu… would screw with your e-mail, right? Probably she created another account, just to make sure you wouldn’t find the evidence if you looked in your Sent file. That’s what I’m guessing. Shame you had to surrender the laptop. She was probably counting on that. Anyway, that explains the increased trading volumes going to Sterling Bates.”

  “Damn it all,” Julian burst out. “I can’t believe one of my traders would do that.”

  “Happens all the time. Every guy has his weak spot, and this Boxer feline is just one of those who knows how to find ’em. Anyway, it’s actually good news. Means that Southfield has a record of what went on. We may be able to track something down from that. So your homework, Laurence, is to find out which of your guys had contact with Boxer. Thinking it was Kate, here, mind you.”

  “Bloody hell,” Julian said, sitting back in his chair and staring at me.

  “Kate,” Daniel continued, “I’ll get that complaint prepared, so it’s ready to go when you’re ready to strike.”

  “Yes. That’s fine. Thank you, Daniel.”

  “Pleasure. Don’t worry, hon. We’ll get these ass… these fine folks for you. Laurence? That all?”

  “That’s all, Daniel. Thanks very much.” Julian leaned forward and punched the off button. He looked back at me.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry,” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “Kate, it was one of my traders. My God!” He jumped up from his chair and paced across the floor. “I’m going to call up Geoff straightaway…”

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t mean to overstep here…”

  He turned around. “I’ve already told you, Kate. It’s not possible. Say what you’re thinking.”

  “Well, I don’t know Geoff as well as you do. He has your trust, so I’m sure he’s a good guy. Just the outsider’s perspective here. Squash it if it’s way off base. But maybe you should suspect everyone, just as a precaution?”

  He fixed me with a penetrating stare. “Are you saying Geoff might be the mole?”

  “No! I’m not saying anything. Like I said, I don’t know him. You do. But maybe we should eliminate him first of all. In fact, let’s do it right now, so you can call him up and get started.”

  Julian didn’t reply at first. He stood, arms folded, looking out the window at the back garden, with his eyebrows drawn in firm and close. The pale diffuse light floated through the glass against his face, gilding it like an angel’s.

  “What is it?” I prodded.

  “I suppose I’m trying to work out how to explain something to you.” He tapped one finger against his forearm.

  “Explain what?”

  “Why it can’t be Geoff who did this. Look, Kate, do you remember the man in the taxi, on Park Avenue? The one who recognized me?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was one of those details I’d pushed to the back of my mind, knowing it was significant somehow, but not having the mind space to deal with it at the moment. “Are you trying to say you knew him? That he’s, like, one of you?”

  “It appears so,” he said, and turned back to face me. “In fact, it is so.”

  “There’s others?” I felt a wave of queasiness cross my body. “But I thought you said you were alone, you had nobody!”

  “I thought I was,” he said, “and then I was sitting on the subway one morning in 1998 and found myself staring into the face of one Geoffrey Warwick.”

  “Geoff?”

  “He was one of my lieutenants in France. One of my friends at Cambridge. And according to the British National Archive, he was killed on the first day of the Somme, in July 1916.”

  15.

  I jumped up from my chair. “Are you saying Geoff’s from your time, too? Geoff?” I tried to bring up his face, his voice. I’d only seen him twice. “But he’s American, isn’t he? He sounded American.”

  Julian leaned back against one of the built-in bookshelves surrounding the window frame. “Geoff adjusted to the change a little more quickly than I did,” he said. “He took it as a God-given deliverance, and made an early decision to make the most of things. He hadn’t left much of worth behind him, you see: parents both dead, no strong ties. The papers he’d been given identified him as an American, so he took on an accent, moved here, and began working as an investment analyst.”

  “Why Wall Street?” I asked.

  “His father was a City stockbroker; he was supposed to take over the business.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed, trying to take it all in. “But that’s amazing! How did it all happen? It’s like you’re ghosts or something. Or someone’s zapping you with a time machine. And you’ve never found out where all this is coming from?”

  “No. Never. Well, Geoff’s never really looked. He likes his life here. He brought me into the firm he worked for, and then encouraged me to start Southfield after I’d had some success managing portfolios. He met Carla around the same time, married her…”

  “Does she know?” Somehow it was hard to imagine the immaculate Mrs. Warwick in possession of that kind of information.

  “Carla?” Julian laughed. “No.”

  “How does he keep it from her? Surely she’d have noticed something being a bit off, here and there, over the years. No family, no childhood friends. Except you.”

  He shrugged. “She’s not the most curious woman.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Wow.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Maybe I should sit down.” I lowered myself cautiously onto the sofa. Julian crossed the room and had his arm around me by the time I’d hit the seat cushion.

  “I’m sorry. All these shocks, all at once.”

  “No! I mean, I should be used to it by now. And don’t say you’re sorry. My God, I’m glad you weren’t alone, all this time. It’s just so amazing, that’s all. A whole First World War reunion going on in New York City, and no one knows.” I shook my head. “So who was that man on Park Avenue, then?”

  He laughed dryly. “Andrew Paulson. Poor chap, though of course he ought to have known better than to be so indiscreet. I’ve put Geoff to work, tracking him down.”

  “And what will you do when you find him?”

  “Help him out, of course. If he needs it. A job at the firm, something like that. Or simply commiseration.” He spoke offhandedly, but I could discern the thread of emotion in his voice.

  “Who was he?” I asked, lacing my fingers into his.

  “Oh, an old rock, Paulson. One of my sergeants when I was just starting out with a second lieutenant’s commission. Taught me a thing or two about keeping my head down and so on.” His voice drifted off, and I sat there for a moment, letting him recollect in silence, feeling his breath warm my hair. “So you see, beloved”—he gathered himself at last and went on—“I trust Geoffrey Warwick quite without reserve.”

  I gave his hand a reassuring squee
ze. “All right. Geoff’s off the suspect list. So what do we do next?”

  “I,” he said, with just the faintest emphasis on the word, “am going to have a long conversation with Geoff, go over the trading records with him, narrow the list. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  I sighed resignedly. “I guess that means you’ll be back in the city tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just the day, I promise. I shan’t leave you alone overnight, not with all this unresolved. Which reminds me.” He rose up from the sofa to approach his desk. His laptop bag was propped up next to it, on the floor. He picked it up and rummaged through. “I brought this back for you,” he said, and tossed me a box. “So you can keep in touch when I’m away.”

  I looked at the box, and then up at him. “A BlackBerry?” I cried in delight.

  “Yours to keep.”

  “You won’t ask for it back, if things don’t work out?” I teased, opening the flap.

  “Does that mean you’re actually accepting it?”

  “Here’s the deal. I’ll let it pass, as long as the monthly bill goes to me.”

  He shook his head sadly. “I see my eloquent words of this morning had no effect on you whatsoever.”

  I pulled the BlackBerry from its box. “The truth is, I’m so glad to have one back, I’d take it from Alicia Boxer herself, if she offered.”

  “Oh, thanks bloody much.”

  “There’s a reason they call it the CrackBerry.” I stroked it lovingly against my cheek. “Did you have it hooked up already?”

  “Yes, I bloody did. And if that’s all the thanks I’m getting…”

  I bounded over to him in two long strides and flung my arms about his neck. “Darling, thoughtful Julian. Thank you so, so much.” I kissed him with abandon, and found myself hoisted up by the bottom with my legs dangling around his hips. I pulled back and smiled. “Is that better?”

  “Remind me,” he murmured, “to bring you gifts more often.”

  “Remind me not to let you.”

  • • •