ALSO BY CRISTINA ALGER
This Was Not the Plan
The Darlings
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
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Copyright © 2018 by Cristina Alger
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alger, Cristina, author.
Title: The banker’s wife / Christina Alger.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017039095| ISBN 9780735218451 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735218468 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3601.L364 B35 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039095
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Jonathan.
CONTENTS
Also by Cristina Alger
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Annabel
Zoe
Annabel
Zoe
Marina
Zoe
Marina
Annabel
Marina
Zoe
Marina
Annabel
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
At London RAF Northolt airport, very few planes were cleared for takeoff. The crosswinds were strong; the downpour of sleet reduced visibility to nil. There was only one runway at Northolt, and a congestion of private jets looking to use it. It was six a.m. The crowd of passengers in the waiting area was small but impatient. Most were businessmen who had morning meetings in Paris, Luxembourg, Berlin. Some were booked on flights chartered by their corporations; a few owned their jets outright. These were not men who liked to wait.
A Russian named Popov was making a scene. He yelled alternately at the woman behind the front desk and at someone on the other end of his phone. Neither person was giving him the answer that he was looking for, so he toggled between them, the volume of his voice rising until he could be heard clear across the terminal. His female companion, a bored, willowy blonde in a fox-fur coat and sneakers, stared at her phone. She seemed accustomed to his rages. Everyone else was looking at Popov. Papers lowered; passengers turned to stare. At six feet four and at least 280 pounds, Alexei Popov was hard to miss, particularly when he was angry.
“I understand, sir,” the woman at the front desk said again, trying to remain professional in the face of his verbal barrage. “And I’m sorry for the inconvenience. But for safety reasons, we must advise—”
Popov cursed in Russian and threw his phone. The woman behind the desk ducked; two security guards walked briskly over to see about the fuss. Even the blonde was paying attention now. She took Popov by the arm and whispered something in his ear, attempting to calm him.
Thomas Jensen sat in the corner of the terminal, watched the scene with mild interest from behind a fresh copy of the Financial Times. Like the other passengers present that morning, Jensen wore a well-tailored suit and carried a briefcase. With his neatly combed silver hair and expensive loafers, Jensen looked like what he was: an Oxford graduate with a background in finance and a robust bank account. Unlike most of the other passengers, however, Jensen was not a financier or captain of industry. Though he was at Northolt on business, it was of a very different sort. He worked for a government agency in a capacity that few people knew existed. The only external indication that Jensen’s work was not a desk job but rather a dangerous and occasionally violent enterprise was the distinctive crook in his nose from where it had once been broken. Though he had suffered worse injuries, Jensen’s nose still gave him trouble. For that reason, he always kept a monogrammed handkerchief in his pocket. He removed it now and wiped his nose with it, while keeping a discreet eye on the other passengers in the waiting area.
Because of the fuss over Popov, Jensen was the only person who noticed when a man and woman crossed the terminal quickly and slipped out the exit door onto the tarmac. Jensen stood, put his handkerchief back into his pocket, and ambled over to the window. He studied the woman’s slight figure, her shoulders hunched against the wind, her hair wrapped up, Jackie Onassis–like, in a black scarf that protected it from the rain. The man was well built and a head taller than the woman. When the man turned, Jensen noted his tortoise-shell glasses and salt-and-pepper hair. The man put his hand protectively on the woman’s shoulder as they boarded a Gulfstream G450. Theirs was the biggest and most expensive plane at Northolt on that particular morning. The news would later report that it was being flown by an exceptional pilot. Omar Khoury had spent a decade in the Royal Saudi Air Force before going into private employ. He was a true, seasoned professional, unlikely to be phased by the suboptimal flying conditions. Almost as soon as the plane’s doors had shut, it was cleared for takeoff. Popov was still yelling about the delay when the G450 taxied down the runway and disappeared into the sky.
Once the plane was in the air, Jensen folded his paper in half and tucked it beneath his arm. He walked past Popov, past the front desk, and out of the terminal. A town car was waiting for him at the curb.
His phone rang as soon as the car turned onto the A40 toward London.
“It’s done,” Jensen said. “Only one flight departed and they were on it.” He hung up, unfolded his paper, and read it in silence for the duration of the ride.
Less than one hour later, the G450 lost contact. Somewhere over the French Alps, it simply fell off the radar, as though it had never existed at all.
Marina
Marina stood on the balcony of her suite at Le Meurice and looked out at the glistening lights of Paris. The view was spectacular, particularly at night. To the west, the Eiffel Tower and Roue de Paris stood illuminated against the night sky. Across the rue de Rivoli, les Jardin des Tuileries glowed, as if lit from within. Marina considered waking up her fiancé, Grant, so he could enjoy the view with her. But there would be time for that. Their trip had just begun. In
stead, Marina sat down at the table. She sparked a cigarette, inhaled. It felt good to have no work to do, no functions to attend, no emails begging response. She could read a book. She could do her nails. She could do nothing at all. The night was hers. Here in Paris, it was just beginning.
Her phone rang, jarring her. Marina felt a prick of irritation when she saw who was calling.
“Duncan,” she said, her voice curt. “It’s past midnight here.”
“Were you sleeping?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You’re still on New York time. You don’t sleep, anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to call me during my first vacation in almost ten years.”
“I need you to do something for me.”
Marina cringed. This was exactly the reason that Grant wanted her to leave Press magazine. In the near decade she’d worked for Duncan, she’d never once taken a vacation. She worked most weekends, countless holidays. She answered her phone at all hours of the night. She had begun her career as Duncan’s assistant. Now, nine and a half years later, despite her senior status on the magazine masthead, he still occasionally treated her as such. Twenty-four hours into this trip, and already, he was tasking her with something. It was unbelievable, really, though not entirely surprising.
Marina intended to quit. She’d promised Grant she would, right after the wedding. The rumors that Grant’s father, James Ellis, was going to run for president were true. The campaign would move into high gear in a matter of weeks. He had already assembled a team of campaign advisors and publicists. He would need it. A hotheaded billionaire from New York, he wasn’t exactly the people’s candidate. But once the spin doctors had done their magic, James Ellis would be transformed into a hardworking success story, a professional deal maker, a fresh alternative to the presumed Democratic nominee—and consummate DC insider—Senator Hayden Murphy. That was the plan, anyway. Murphy, who had been dogged for years by rumors of corruption and cronyism, was a formidable but flawed candidate. Ellis knew this; he was banking on it.
Quietly, Marina had her doubts that her future father-in-law was fit to be the leader of the free world. She’d seen him lose his temper at kind people who made the smallest of errors: at a new housekeeper who stocked the wrong kind of bottled water at the Southampton house, for example, or at a driver who missed the turnoff for Teterboro Airport. She also knew that Grant was a calming influence on his father. Grant would resign from his investment banking job and take over the family business while his father was out on the campaign trail. In his new capacity as president of Ellis Enterprises, Grant would travel constantly, and he would expect Marina to accompany him. There were things one had to do as the wife of a CEO of a multinational corporation. Not to mention the wife of the president’s son, should it come to that. She couldn’t work and be Mrs. Grant Ellis. At least, not at the same time. There was no question what was more important to her. She had to quit. That was part of the deal, and on some level, she’d always known it.
For a moment, Marina considered quitting right then, over the phone. It was justified, certainly. People at Press quit all the time. Duncan was a famously difficult editor in chief, and he paid his staff below the paltry industry standard. But it didn’t feel right. After everything Duncan had done for her—and everything they’d done together—she wanted to resign the right way: in person, at a time that made sense not just for her, but for the magazine, too.
“You’re unbelievable,” Marina said. She stubbed out her cigarette and slipped back inside to find a pencil. “Aren’t you supposed to be on a sabbatical?”
Duncan didn’t answer the question. The topic of his sabbatical was a sore one. It was not something he had agreed to voluntarily. Rather, it was mandated by Philip Brancusi, the CEO of Press’s parent company, who insisted that Duncan use the six weeks to dry out, once and for all. The drinking had become a problem, and everyone in publishing knew it. Everyone except Duncan himself.
“Are you writing this down?” he said.
“Of course I am.”
“I need you to meet someone. He’s coming from Luxembourg. I don’t know how long he’ll be free, so make yourself available. He’s going to give you a USB to bring to me. Be very careful with it. And tell no one.”
“What am I supposed to say to Grant? I have a date with a mysterious European?”
“Who’s Grant?”
“You’re joking.”
“Tell him you’re going for a run. Or you need to meet an old friend. He’s a big boy. He’ll survive without you for forty-five minutes.” Duncan sounded irritated, which irritated Marina. She pressed hard on her pencil, snapping the tip.
“Damn it,” she muttered, and reached for a pen.
“Look, I know you’re frustrated,” Duncan said. “I know what I’m asking is annoying. But it’s important, Marina. This material is highly sensitive. My source doesn’t trust email, even encrypted email. He wants to hand over the data directly. I was going to fly to Geneva last week to meet him myself, but I believe I’m being followed.”
Marina stifled an eyeroll. “By who?”
Duncan ignored her. “I told him you’re the only person I trust.”
“Stop buttering me up, Duncan. I suppose I don’t get to know what this is about?”
Duncan paused. In the background, Marina could hear what sounded like a snowplow. She wondered if Duncan was out of the city, holed up at his weekend house, where he was beginning to spend more and more of his time. She worried about him out there. He drank too much and socialized too little. When Duncan drank, he became dramatic and paranoid. When he got dramatic and paranoid, he usually called Marina.
“We’ll talk when you’re back,” he said. “But, Marina . . . this is it. After all these years, I think we finally found him.”
Marina stopped writing. “Him?”
“Morty Reiss.”
“Alive?”
“Very much so.”
Marina paused, absorbing the enormity of what Duncan was saying. It had been eight years since Morty Reiss’s suicide. Almost to the day. Or rather, it had been eight years since Morty Reiss’s car was found on the Tappan Zee Bridge, a suicide note taped to the windshield. Days after his alleged suicide, Morty’s hedge fund, RCM, was uncovered as one of the largest Ponzi schemes of all time. Reiss saw the writing on the wall and jumped, or so the story went. His body, however, was never found. At the beginning, Marina and Duncan harbored the same suspicion as many: that Reiss faked his own death and disappeared with his ill-gotten gains to some sun-washed country without an extradition treaty. Of all the people Marina had written stories about during her tenure at Press magazine, Reiss was perhaps the smartest, most ruthless con man she’d ever come across. Given that Marina wrote about New York society figures—Wall Street tycoons, real estate magnates, fashion designers, publicists—that was saying a lot. If anyone was smart enough to disappear along with his money, it was Reiss.
Reiss was brilliant—as brilliant as they come—but eventually all Ponzi schemes necessarily come to an end, and that was the one thing that had always niggled at Marina about the RCM story. Insider trading, embezzlement: anyone could get away with these crimes if they were clever enough. Just steal the money and ride off into the sunset. But a Ponzi scheme required an unending supply of investors. Without new investors, the whole scheme collapsed like a house of cards. So why would Reiss opt into a crime with no end? He seemed too smart for that. That is, unless he’d planned on faking his death all along.
If that was the case, Marina had to hand it to him: Reiss was potentially the most cunning financial criminal of all time.
As the years passed with no news or trace of Reiss, however, Marina’s disbelief faded slowly into acceptance. Was it really possible for a man like Reiss—whose face flashed across television screens worldwide for months on end—to disappear? Marina didn’t
think so. It seemed too far-fetched—fantastical, even. A Hollywood plotline instead of a real news story. Reiss was smart, but he was also human. Perhaps his greed or hubris did end up getting the better of him.
While Marina’s interest with Morty Reiss waned, Duncan Sander’s blossomed into a full-blown obsession. After he and Marina cowrote the original exposé of RCM, Duncan went on to pen several more pieces about Reiss and his coconspirator, Carter Darling. His theories about Reiss’s whereabouts became outlandish and unsubstantiated, and Marina feared that Duncan’s fixation had irreparably damaged his reputation as a serious journalist. Six months ago, it had almost cost him his career. On a morning talk show, Duncan claimed Reiss had hundreds of millions stashed in an account at Caribbean International Bank in the Cayman Islands. US authorities looked the other way, Duncan said, because a ring of high-profile politicians, who also happened to have millions stashed away in numbered accounts, were protecting the bank. The interview caused a sensation, not only because of what Duncan said, but how he said it. His slurred speech and sweaty, unkempt appearance did not go unnoticed by viewers. Soon, there were rumors that Duncan Sander was headed for a public meltdown. Caribbean International Bank threatened to sue not only Duncan, but Press and its parent company, Merchant Publications. Under pressure from CEO Brancusi, Duncan issued a hasty retraction. Then he made a show of heading to a rehab facility in northern Connecticut, where he spent a few weeks drying out and nursing his ego. As far as Marina could tell, rehab hadn’t helped much with Duncan’s drinking. It bought him a reprieve at Press, however, and Duncan had returned to work a month later.
Now he was on his second attempt at rehab, and Marina knew it was the last chance with Brancusi. He had given Duncan an ultimatum: dry out for good and come back ready to work, or don’t come back at all. Duncan couldn’t afford another misstep. One more lapse in judgment, and Brancusi would have his head.
“Duncan, can you prove this? You’ll need to. We can’t have another—” Marina stopped short, not wanting to finish that sentence. Duncan did not like being reminded of the interview, or his drinking problem, or frankly any mistake he’d ever made, ever. They’d never spoken of it, except in the vaguest of references.
The Banker’s Wife Page 1