The Banker’s Wife

by Cristina Alger

  “Do you know how much money is stored in offshore accounts, Ms. Tourneau?”

  “Tens of billions, I imagine.”

  “Thirty-two trillion. More than the GDP of the US and Japan combined.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “There’s a whole world offshore, Ms. Tourneau. A world of dirty money, hidden away in shadow accounts, and it belongs to some very powerful and dangerous people. Imagine if you could see their bank balances. Their transactions. Their network. I’m talking about cartel kings. Terrorists. World leaders. Even people you know, people you went to school with, people who live across the street. And yes, Morty Reiss, too, who is alive and well and living off nearly seventy million dollars he has stashed at Swiss United Bank.”

  “And you have this data? Bank balances? Emails? Tangible proof that this money exists—and who it belongs to?”

  Mark nodded toward her pocket. “And now you do, too. The world needs to know—”

  The sound of voices turned both their heads. A pair of joggers moved toward them, chattering in French.

  “I should go.”

  Marina nodded. “I’ll get this to Duncan as soon as I return to the States. I imagine he’ll be in touch.”

  Mark’s dark eyes darted from left to right, then back at her. “Ms. Tourneau,” he said. “You must understand: several people have risked their lives to get this information to you. Tell no one, trust no one. I have trusted you only because Duncan Sander asked me to, and time is of the essence. The sooner this information comes out to the public, the better. We will all be safer once it does.”

  “We won’t let you down. This is what Duncan and I do. You can trust us.”

  “We have bet our lives on that.” He nodded good-bye. Marina watched him disappear between the trees. Then she turned and sprinted back toward Le Meurice.

  * * *

  • • •

  GRANT WAS STILL in bed when Marina returned to the room. His thick brown hair was tousled and his glasses sat askew on his nose. A pot of coffee sat on the bedside table; the New York Times was spread across the sheets. He didn’t look up when Marina opened the door. For a moment, Marina stood still, admiring her fiancé. Six years out of the navy, he still had the same lean and well-muscled body as the day they met. His eyelashes fluttered when he slept; his thick, brooding eyebrows were knit together as though he was deep in thought. He wore his hair a little longer now, not in the crew cut he’d sported for his first few years out of the military, but still cropped close around the ears. Every four weeks, he went to the barbershop around the corner. Marina loved to run her fingers through it right after a cut. There was a practicality to Grant that she found incredibly sexy, a disinterest in his own handsomeness that made him more handsome. Grant had the kind of good looks that turned women’s heads on the street, though he never seemed to know it. If anything, he was shy around women. Marina had made the first move and asked him out. Twice. The first time he declined, something she still liked to occasionally tease him about.

  “He turned me down once. So when I saw him in Starbucks six years later, I demanded a date from him. I was not taking no for an answer again,” Marina declared during her toast at their engagement party. This statement was met with wild applause from their friends. “I walked right up and introduced myself and he remembered me. We went on our first date that weekend. And when he held the cab door open for me at the end of the night, I just knew he was it. I wasn’t going to let this gentleman get away twice.”

  It was a good story, one she knew they’d tell again over the course of their life together. But the truth of it was that if Grant had said yes the first time, it never would have worked. Marina was a young, hungry society reporter living the high life in Manhattan. Grant was a Navy SEAL who was about to return to Fallujah on his second tour of duty. Their initial spark was intense, but it would have fizzled out over time and distance and the sheer differences in their lives. Anyway, she had needed time to grow up. By their second chance encounter, Marina was old enough to know a good thing when she saw one.

  * * *

  • • •

  NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, Marina thought how lucky she was to fall asleep beside this man every night and to wake up next to him in the morning. She felt a pang of regret for having left him, if only for an hour.

  “Good morning, husband-to-be.” Marina smiled as she said the word. Reflexively, she reached for her engagement ring, which she’d left on the nightstand. It was a massive five-carat emerald-cut diamond set between trapezoidal sapphires. A breathtaking ring, the kind she had always hoped to wear. But once she had it, she found she was almost afraid of it. She couldn’t imagine wearing it on the subway to work, or to interview a source, or even while sitting at her desk at Press. Most mornings, she left it in a small dish on her bedside table. She knew it bothered Grant that she didn’t wear it all the time, but he seemed to understand her desire to not risk losing something so expensive and irreplaceable. Once they were married, once she had quit her job, she promised to wear it all the time.

  “How long have you been up?” she asked.

  When Grant looked at her, Marina’s smile faded.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Grant shook his head. Without a word, he handed her the paper. It was folded to a page in the Metro section. Marina took it and scanned its contents.

  “‘From the Penthouse to the White House.’” She glanced at the picture of Grant’s father. She skimmed the article—it seemed neutral, raising only the vague specter of Ellis family ties to Middle Eastern money. Nothing that hadn’t been printed before.

  “It’s not terrible,” she said. “Your dad looks handsome in this picture. He looks like you, actually. Just with less hair.”

  “No. Not that.” Grant took the paper from her and flipped it over. “Here,” he said, tapping the page. “Look at this. He was a Harvard classmate of mine. Matthew Werner. Only thirty-five.”

  Marina scanned the page. “Oh, that’s sad. Was he married?”

  “Yes. You met them once.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “At a party at the Whitney. The wife worked at a gallery in Chelsea.”

  Marina remembered the wife. In a room filled with beautiful women, Annabel Werner stood out. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she was striking. She had worn something very avant-garde, white and asymmetrical, a dress that very few women could pull off. A distilled calm emanated from her face. Her high cheekbones were accentuated by boyishly short hair. Bright blue eyes that shone with a serene, watchful intelligence. Marina liked her immediately. They had spoken briefly, as their husbands chattered on about old classmates. They had even exchanged contact information, but neither had followed up. Months later, Marina heard that the Werners had moved to Europe. She had felt a twinge of disappointment. There weren’t many women who Marina thought she might like to try to be friends with. Annabel Werner had been one of them.

  “He was a nice guy. Well liked. He took a job at Swiss United working for—” Grant kept talking but Marina had stopped listening. Her eyes had fallen to a small article at the bottom of the page, beneath the clip about Matthew Werner.

  “‘Society Journalist Found Dead in Connecticut Home,’” she read aloud.

  Beneath the headline was a photograph of a picturesque white Colonial with black shutters, its window boxes covered in snow. The front door of the house was open; emerging from it was a paramedic who appeared to be wheeling out a body on a gurney. Police tape cordoned off a section of the front porch. Through a window, Marina could see an antique grandfather clock that looked instantly familiar.

  “Oh God,” Marina whispered, her voice hoarse.

  She knew that house. She’d been at that house just last month.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Duncan. Duncan Sander. He’s dead.”

  Annabel


  For forty-eight hours, Annabel held out hope that Matthew would be found alive. When she wasn’t on the phone with the airport officials, search party personnel, or Agents Bloch and Vogel, she was frantically researching private plane crash statistics. She found a newspaper article about a Gulfstream G450 that had crashed in the Canadian Rockies during an electrical storm. Three of its passengers had survived. They were found thirty hours after the plane went down, several miles from where the plane’s fuselage had landed. Starving and injured, but alive. She memorized their names: Paul Gagnon, John Leblanc, Alec Roy. At night, after taking a cocktail of sleeping medications, Annabel repeated their names to herself, like an incantation, a mantra. Survivors gave her hope.

  She found another article about another G450, a Dutch plane that had crashed in the Alps. It had happened twelve months ago, also during a storm. The facts were not good. There had been no survivors. Almost nothing was recovered; just the black box and small fragments of the body and wing. Annabel read it again and again. Finally she deleted her search history, banishing it to the internet ether.

  Annabel looked up Fatima Amir, too. How could she not? Matthew had died with her, aboard her plane. A woman she’d never heard of before Fedpol came knocking on her door.

  There was remarkably little information about Fatima Amir online. More than one article commented on how publicity-shy she was; a recent article in the Financial Times referred to her as a “reclusive financial wunderkind.” In a way, Annabel was relieved there wasn’t much to read. Fatima Amir was wildly wealthy, successful, well educated, beautiful. Scrolling through photographs of her felt like an act of self-flagellation. It served no purpose and sent Annabel spiraling further into despair.

  The day before, a search team had located the plane’s black box on the summit of Mont Trélod. According to Agent Bloch, who delivered this news to Annabel in person, it showed that the ice protection system failed midflight. This caused ice to build up on the plane’s wings, unbeknownst to the pilot. A relatively common problem with private jets, Bloch said. He said this matter-of-factly, as though he was talking about a minor design flaw. Seats that didn’t fully recline. Crooked tray tables.

  “An accident,” he said, in conclusion. “A tragic accident.”

  “You’re certain? There’s no concern that . . .” Annabel trailed off. On the BBC, an anchor had wondered aloud about a potential terrorist link to Fatima Amir and her pilot, Omar Khoury. Annabel had switched off the television right away, unwilling to consider that possibility. Still, suspicion gnawed at her. She was ashamed to admit it, but the fact that both were Middle Eastern gave her pause.

  “That it was an intentional act?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was considered, of course. In today’s political climate, it always is, especially when a family like the Amirs are involved. But as of now, that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing theory. Black boxes contain a good deal of information, Mrs. Werner. The data and voice recordings from the cockpit both indicate a system malfunction.”

  “‘A family like the Amirs?’”

  “Fatima Amir. The owner of the plane. She was the other passenger.”

  “Yes, I know,” Annabel said curtly. It bothered her that Bloch spoke about Fatima Amir in the past tense, as though he already assumed she was dead. It was so cold, so clinical. She wanted to correct him but hadn’t found the nerve. She was too tired to pick fights. “As I told you, I’d never heard of her before—” She stopped. “Before this.”

  Annabel looked over at Julian. He had come to see her every day since the crash. He was the first person Annabel had called after Agents Bloch and Vogel left her apartment. The only person. He was, she realized, the one person she’d met in Geneva who she truly cared about, and who she knew cared about her.

  Like Matthew, Julian White was a trained tax lawyer. He’d come to Geneva seven years earlier for the same reason Matthew had: to make money, and lots of it. When he left London, Julian was an overworked and underpaid agent for HMRC, the British equivalent of the IRS. Here in Geneva, he was a private banker with a thick wallet and an even thicker Rolodex.

  Annabel hated Julian when she first met him. She found him pompous and extravagant, everything she feared Matthew might become if he hung around too long at a private bank in Switzerland. Three months into their relocation, Annabel had accompanied Matthew on a business trip to Zürich. While Matthew was in meetings, Annabel took the train to the Museum Oskar Reinhart, a private villa that housed one of the most exquisite collections of French nineteenth-century art in the world. It was what Annabel did most days in Switzerland. She walked through museums and galleries alone and looked at art. Not so different from her life in New York, she told herself. Though, of course, here she wasn’t paid for it.

  When she emerged from the railway station in Winterthur, it had begun to rain. Annabel sat down on the bench and laced her boots tighter, bracing herself for an unpleasant walk to the museum. She had no umbrella and hadn’t thought to wear a rain jacket. When she felt the rain stop, she looked up. Julian was standing over her, sheltering her beneath a Swiss United umbrella.

  “I imagine you’re going to the same place I am,” he said. “May I walk you?”

  “Shouldn’t you be at the offsite? I thought it was a firm-wide thing.”

  “It is.” He smiled agreeably. “Which is why they won’t notice that one of us decided to play hooky.”

  “And you’ve decided to spend your spare day with Renoir and Cézanne instead of with— Forgive me, I can’t remember the name of the young woman you introduced us to when we saw you last.” Annabel knew she was being snarky, but she couldn’t help herself. They had bumped into Julian a few weeks earlier at a restaurant, sitting with a woman in a shockingly short dress. If she was of age, she had only very recently become so.

  Julian didn’t seem to mind. “Oh, Natasha? Very smart woman. She discarded me almost immediately.”

  “She does sound smart.”

  “I’m really more of a Daumier man myself. Such a sense of humor. Do you know him? I can tell you all about him if not.”

  “Yes, of course!” Annabel said, surprised. “I wrote my graduate thesis on Daumier when I was at Yale.”

  “Then you must know just slightly less about him than I do. Come. Let’s go educate each other.” Julian extended his elbow. Annabel stuck her arm through his and pulled herself close to Julian’s side as the skies opened up and the thunder cracked angrily over their heads.

  By the time they returned to Zürich, Julian and Annabel were friends. He seemed to sense how lonely she was. He invited her to gallery openings. He introduced her to artists and collectors and curators. He encouraged her to find work. He had connections to clients who needed art advisors, he said, and friends at auction houses who would happily hire an experienced appraiser. Matthew didn’t seem to mind that Annabel spent so much time with Julian. If anything, he was happy that Annabel finally seemed more settled in Geneva. Never once did Matthew seem threatened by their relationship. Annabel wished she could say the same about herself. In New York, it hadn’t occurred to her to be jealous. Or maybe she just hadn’t had the time. In Geneva, she had too much time. Matthew was always gone. He ate dinner in the office. He traveled for work. He had a beautiful young assistant, a French girl named Zoe, who went with him everywhere. Annabel found that when she was alone, her imagination took over. She began to have terrible dreams about Matthew cheating or leaving her. When she was with Julian, at least, she didn’t think about such things. Being with Julian made her feel like herself again: a human being with friends and interests. A person with an identity beyond being an expat, a banker’s wife.

  Julian cleared his throat. He stood by the window, hands stuffed in his pockets. He looked exhausted. Circles ringed his pale blue eyes; worry lines creased his forehead. His thinning blond hair, usually combed neatly in place, looked unkempt. Annabel reali
zed that he hadn’t changed his clothes since yesterday. Had he gone home to sleep? She couldn’t remember. Days had begun to blur together. She slept in snatches. An hour here, an hour there, with only a vague sense of day or night. The pills Julian gave her did little to help. She washed them down with wine, hoping for rest. A sense of deep fatigue permeated her bones. She was tired all the time, but an electric fear coursed through her veins, forcing her brain and nerves to work in overdrive.

  Julian had something to say. Annabel could sense it by the way he pursed his lips, as though he was trying to keep himself from sharing something he knew she wouldn’t want to hear.

  “Who is she, Julian?” she prompted. “Tell me. I need to know.”

  “Fatima is one of Matthew’s clients,” Julian said quietly. “My understanding is that she’s a distant cousin of Bashar al-Assad.”

  “A direct cousin,” Bloch corrected.

  “She’s not a terrorist.” Julian shook his head. “She’s a hedge fund investor. She lives in London. She was born and raised there; her father is a doctor. They have no relationship with the Syrian side of their family. Swiss United wouldn’t do business with them if they did. I promise you.”

  Annabel frowned, considering this. “How did she know Matthew?”

  “I imagine Jonas introduced them. Her brother’s been a client of the bank for years.”

  “Is that why Matthew was in London, then? To see her?” She almost said To be with her, but caught herself.

  “I don’t know, Annabel. Really, I don’t. Our business is built on confidentiality. Matthew and I never speak about the people in our books. It’s just not something you do.”

  “But you know she’s his client.”

  “He never told me that. I just assumed. I saw them together a few times.”

  Annabel raised her eyebrows.

  “In a professional context, I mean,” he added hastily. “At the bank. You know, coming and going from meetings.”