The Banker’s Wife

by Cristina Alger

  “That’s a crazy risk.”

  Owen nodded. “Insane. Honest to God, we should be checking in with this guy regularly to make sure he’s still alive. It takes serious cojones to steal data in real time. Most sources steal it and bolt. This guy is just stealing it, sending it to us, and stealing some more.”

  “Stealing isn’t the right word,” Yael argued. “He’s doing the right thing. This guy is whistle-blower of the year. Maybe the decade.”

  “Fine. You’re right. He’s like the Robin Hood of data. Stealing from the corrupt rich. Distributing to us, the noble poor. Sorry, Marina. I know you’re no longer a member of the proletariat now that you’re engaged to Grant Ellis.”

  Marina ignored him. “Did you look up Morty Reiss?”

  Owen and Yael exchanged glances.

  “So Yael and I were talking about the best way to do this,” Owen said. “Both of us think it might be time to call in the cavalry. If we bring it to the ICIJ, we can get a team of reporters working on it. Only the best. We’ll work together with Christophe to determine who will be pulled in. Each reporter we bring covers a region—Russia, China, the UK. You and I can pick which US stories we want to work on, dole the rest out to other reporters here—maybe folks at the Times, the Journal, the Post. We can discuss. Then we all publish simultaneously. Same hour, same day. It will be incredible. The biggest data leak in history.”

  Marina shook her head. “I think it’s too risky.”

  “This story is bigger than Morty Reiss, Marina. Morty Reiss is a small fish in a very big, dirty, illegal pond.”

  “What about Matthew Werner?”

  “We looked. And you were definitely onto something. Matthew Werner isn’t all that interesting, but Fatima Amir, the woman he died with, sure was. Come check this out.”

  Marina moved her chair over next to Owen’s. Yael stood behind them, her arms crossed. He typed in “Fares Amir.”

  A glossy head shot from a London-based hedge fund, the Amir Group, appeared on the screen. Smiling and handsome, with thinning but perfectly groomed hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a bright blue Hermès tie that popped against his dark skin, Fares Amir looked like the quintessential British banker.

  “Meet Fares Amir, Fatima Amir’s brother.”

  “Fares Amir is a managing director in charge of Client Services at the Amir Group, a hedge fund founded by his sister, Fatima Amir, in 2009,” Marina read. “Fares holds degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and prior to working at the Amir Group, he spent several years in the Real Estate Principal Investment Area (REPIA) at Goldman Sachs.”

  “Impressive résumé, right? He forgets to mention that his biggest ‘client’ is his cousin Bashar al-Assad. Who, publically, he claims to have no relationship with. Otherwise he’d end up on sanctions lists. But in private, he’s been doing the guy’s money laundering for years.”

  With another click, Owen pulled up a grainy photograph of two dark-haired men in suits. They were walking shoulder to shoulder, their heads turned in caucus. Marina squinted at the screen. One was unquestionably Assad. The other bore a remarkable resemblance to Fares Amir.

  “Fares is a client of our friends Schmit & Muller. Through them, he sets up a series of shell companies, with innocuous names like ‘UK Land Corp’ and ‘Island Properties Inc.’ Assad deposits money into UK Land Corp, typically in gold bars that have been purchased with dirty money, made from arms sales or payoffs from corrupt officials. UK Land Corp turns around and uses the gold to buy property, which is then sold to Island Properties. This continues down a chain of shell companies, until the original source of the funds is so obscure that it would be impossible to trace. Eventually, the property gets sold back to one of Fares Amir’s clients at Amir Group. The client is thrilled because they pick the property up at a significant discount. And Assad doesn’t care that he’s losing a bit of money, because now it’s clean, sitting in a bank account at Swiss United, ready to be withdrawn for him by one of his minions.”

  Marina stared, wide-eyed at the computer. “And you have proof of all this?” she asked Owen. “A full paper trail?”

  “Full paper trail. Emails—very explicit emails. It’s actually kind of awesome how crooked these guys are. They literally just talk about what they’re doing like its business as usual. ‘Mr. Al-Assad would like to transfer ten million US dollars into four new companies. He understands that the fee for this transaction will be five hundred thousand US dollars. He would like this done by close of business on Friday.’ Stuff like that. And then there are the bank accounts, the wire transfer confirmations, the formation documents for the shell companies. All in neatly labeled folders from inside Schmit & Muller’s internal database.”

  “It never occurred to these people that they might be hacked? Or that this data might leak in some way?” Marina said.

  “They have an incredibly sophisticated security system in place,” Yael explained. “Schmit & Muller is like Fort Knox. The only way the information would get out is through an inside leak. I guess they have their ways of preventing those, too.”

  Marina frowned. “They weren’t able to prevent this leak.”

  “No. But I think they tried.” Owen clicked open an email between Hans Hoffman and Julian White. “Remember these guys? From the Morty Reiss emails? Hoffman’s one of the heads of Schmit & Muller. White is a private banker at Swiss United. He reports directly to Jonas Klauser, the bank’s CEO.”

  “I remember.”

  Marina skimmed the email. She shivered, her arms crossing her body reflexively. The content was short and the words were chilling.

  October 20, 2015

  From: Julian White

  To: Hans Hoffman

  Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL: see attached

  We have confirmed that on at least three separate occasions over the past month and a half, Fatima Amir met with an agent from MI6. At the second meeting, her banker from Swiss United, Matthew Werner, was present. We believe that they have and will continue to provide confidential financial information regarding Fares Amir, Bashar al-Assad, and his associates to the authorities. Photos are attached.

  Marina clicked open the photos. They were grainy and shot from above. They showed two men and a woman, sitting on a private balcony of what appeared to be a hotel. They sat at a table, and the woman’s face was partially obscured by the table’s umbrella. She was leaning forward, her hand atop a manila envelope. One of the men had a briefcase. In the subsequent photos, he could be seen examining the contents of the manila envelope and then placing it into his briefcase.

  “So Fatima Amir was giving incriminating information about her own family to MI6?”

  “Her brother is a money launderer. Her cousin’s a war criminal. Anyone who thinks their family is fucked up should meet the Amirs.”

  “But our mole is from inside Schmit & Muller,” Marina pressed. “And our mole is, as far as we know, alive. So Fatima Amir and Matthew Werner were not the ones feeding information to Duncan. But it just seems like too much of a coincidence, right? That they were all killed on the same day? Something about it doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “But maybe Schmit & Muller didn’t know where the leak was coming from. All they know is someone is feeding information to the authorities. And these two appear to be doing just that.”

  “So she was a mole, but not our mole.”

  Yael opened another screen. It showed the wreckage of a plane, its parts strewn about a glistening mountaintop. “And this is how they deal with moles.”

  “Christ.”

  “Plane crashed just forty-eight hours after these emails. Same day Duncan was murdered. Convenient, right?”

  “If by convenient, you mean terrifying.”

  “Oh, and remember Duncan’s trip to the Caymans?”

  Marina nodded. “Yeah, the Schmit & Muller guys figured he had a source inside CIB.”


  “Well, guess who turned up dead the day after Duncan left? Freak boating accident.”

  “A CIB banker.”

  “Bingo.”

  “So we’ve got two dead private bankers, a dead private banking client, and a dead journalist,” Marina said, shaking her head.

  “But one living mole,” Owen said, pulling up his computer. He pointed to the screen. “He’s sending us more data now. Let’s get to work. If we’re going to go to the ICIJ, we need a secure database first that can be accessed by users around the globe.”

  “The source has to agree. We can’t bring in a whole team without talking to him.”

  “This guy is already on borrowed time, Marina. I think he’ll come around to seeing the benefit of having the ICIJ behind him.”

  “Is Christophe Martin ready to help us?”

  Yael smiled. “Are you kidding? This is the story of a lifetime. For him—for all of us.”

  Annabel

  Fares Amir lived in a stately Edwardian home on Lygon Place in Belgravia. All the homes on Lygon Place were immaculate and nearly uniform in construction. They had grand, redbricked facades, black wooden shutters, cross-hatched windows, and peaked roofs that reminded Annabel of the illustrations of London in Peter Pan. The central courtyard was pristinely kept, set behind a security gate with a porter’s lodge. Annabel’s hands shook as she opened the gate and let it click closed behind her. Though it was midmorning on a Sunday, the courtyard was as quiet as a library. The trees rustled in the breeze overhead, and in the distance, Annabel could hear only faintly the sounds of traffic on Ebury Street. London, particularly this corner of it, was so much more serene than New York. It struck Annabel as remarkable that a man who might be at least tangentially responsible for the mass destruction of whole cities in Syria could live in such a peaceful place.

  Before she knocked on the front door, it opened. A man in a suit gestured for her to step inside. Annabel couldn’t tell if he was a butler, a bodyguard, or a business associate. He, however, knew exactly who she was.

  “Please come in, Mrs. Werner,” he said, taking her coat. “I’ll show you into the library. Mr. Amir is expecting you.”

  Annabel followed him down a long hall to an oak-paneled library overlooking the courtyard. At one end of the room, two leather armchairs sat around a coffee table heaped with books. Annabel didn’t know whether or not to sit, so she stood uneasily by the fireplace. Over it hung an exquisite Monet. She moved closer, unable to resist.

  “It’s a wonderful work, isn’t it?” Fares Amir said from behind her. “He’s a master of light and color. The way he depicts the sky here is exceptional. I bought it at auction just a few days ago. I think it looks lovely there.”

  Annabel turned and extended her hand, embarrassed. “Yes, lovely,” she said, her words catching in her throat. “I’m Annabel Werner. Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Of course.” Fares gestured for her to sit at one of the two armchairs by the fireplace. “Would you like anything? Tea? Water?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” Fares nodded at his employee. He drew the library doors closed, leaving Fares and Annabel alone.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Werner. I only met your husband once or twice, but Fatima always spoke highly of him.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry for your loss as well.”

  “Did you ever meet my sister?”

  Annabel shook her head. “No. Matthew was very private about his work. He never mentioned her to me.”

  “Discretion is perhaps the most important quality a private banker can have.”

  Though it struck Annabel as an odd, possibly ominous thing to say, she nodded her head in agreement. “Matthew believed that, too.”

  “I have his things for you. You’re probably wondering how they ended up at my sister’s home. I know I would wonder that, if I were in your position. I assure you, contrary to what the tabloids here have suggested, their business relationship was just that, a business relationship. I didn’t know your husband well, Mrs. Werner, but I did know my sister. She was a consummate professional and a very loyal person. She would have never crossed that ethical line. It’s unthinkable to me, frankly.”

  “I trusted my husband as well, Mr. Amir. Implicitly. I’m sure there was a good explanation for why he was staying at your sister’s home instead of at a hotel.”

  Fares nodded. He seemed pleased that she had reached this conclusion. “There is, I’m afraid. And it’s my fault. My sister, you see, was a powerful woman. She ran a twenty-billion-dollar fund. I worked for her, though she would have never said it. She was always kind enough to say that I worked with her.” He laughed, and Annabel did her best to smile with him. He was, she thought, remarkably at ease for a man who had just lost his sister in a plane crash.

  “My sister had access to a great deal of confidential information. And as her banker, Matthew did as well. It was my job to ensure the security of that information. Recently, we’d had some concerns about data leaking outside our firm. So being the vigilant person that I am, I insisted that Matthew stay at Fatima’s home instead of a hotel. I wanted to be sure that he was using a secure network. With hotels, one never can tell. This was something we do with all of our bankers and lawyers. Jonas Klauser stayed here, with me, just last month. I can see how, at first blush, that might seem unusual or even inappropriate. But it really was just a security issue.”

  Annabel nodded. She wanted to believe Fares. But his explanation struck her as too smooth. Practiced, even. Not unlike Agent Bloch’s description of the plane crash itself. “Thank you,” she said. “I knew there was a reason for his stay, but you’ve put my mind at ease, now that I know what it is.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “You said there were security concerns at your firm? When you heard about the plane crash, did you wonder if . . .” Annabel trailed off. She didn’t want to risk offending him. But she was desperate to see if he flinched when she began to probe him about the plane crash.

  “If there was foul play?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course. I imagine you did, as well. But we have our own investigator. He concluded it was an accident. A tragedy, of course. But an accidental one.”

  Annabel nodded. “That’s good to hear,” she said slowly. “The idea that someone would want to harm Matthew . . . it’s very painful to me.”

  “I understand completely.”

  They sat for a moment in silence. Then Annabel stood, hoping she wasn’t making an offensively abrupt departure. The truth was, it made her skin crawl to sit across from Fares Amir and allow him to continue to lie to her. “I don’t want to keep you from your work,” she said. “Thank you for seeing me. And for returning me Matthew’s things.”

  Fares stood. “It’s my pleasure. My assistant, Emmet, will give them to you on the way out. It’s nothing of consequence, really. Just his overcoat and a USB, which, for reasons I’ve already explained, we don’t allow into our compound here. I hope I’ve given you some comfort about your husband’s visit to London. If you have any other questions, or if I can do anything for you, please don’t hesitate to be in touch.”

  “I will, thank you.”

  “Are you returning home to Geneva?”

  “I’m staying with an old friend here in London for the next day or so. Then I thought I’d go home and pack up our flat in Geneva. I’d like to return to New York as soon as possible. New York is home to me. I think it’s the best place for me now.”

  “That sounds like a wise plan.”

  “You’ve been very kind, Mr. Amir. I’m sorry again for your loss. My thoughts will be with you and your family.”

  “And mine with yours.”

  Annabel couldn’t help but let her eyes linger over the Monet as she exited the room. “This is truly magnificent,” she said, pausing for a moment in front of it. “I love his
later works. They’re so elegant in their simplicity. Just the sky, the mountains, the light. He painted this during his time in Antibes, no? The quality of light is just extraordinary.”

  “You have a good eye, Mrs. Werner.”

  “I worked at a gallery back in New York.”

  “You should again. There are few things in this world that offer solace like a good painting.”

  “Indeed.”

  She extended her hand, and their eyes met as he shook it.

  “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Amir.”

  “Have a safe trip home, Mrs. Werner.”

  * * *

  • • •

  BACK IN SHOREDITCH, the door to Khalid’s apartment was ajar. Annabel hesitated, then stepped inside. The place was trashed. Clothes were strewn across the floor. Papers scattered across the dining room table. Rap music was booming so loudly from the speakers in his bookcase that the threshold pulsed beneath her feet. Annabel felt cold. The window, she noticed, was open. Should she run? What if someone had come after her—after the laptop—and found Khalid instead? If anything happened to him because of her, she could never forgive herself.

  “Khalid?” she called out. No response.

  “Khalid!” she called again, urgently this time. From the bedroom, she heard the faint sound of water running. She walked toward it, her pace quickening as she went. As her hand reached for the knob, the door flew open. Annabel let out a small scream.

  “Christ, Annabel,” Khalid exclaimed. He was dripping from the shower. A towel was slung around his neck, otherwise he was naked. He grabbed it quickly and wrapped it around his midsection, but not before Annabel’s face turned crimson with embarrassment. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “You scared me! When I came in, the front door was open and the music was blasting and there were clothes everywhere . . . I thought . . .”