Sun: Film is art, not politics. Whatever ties these men might have had in the past with any such organization are just that: in the past. During the course of shooting, I came to know all of them. They are remarkable human beings. As I mentioned, we had a hard time finding a few of them. Two were in Egypt and one in Sudan. Several had scattered across Europe. All had gainful employment and had started families. Enough talk of politics.
Le Figaro: And two of them were not given visas to come to France…even with the festival’s backing—
Sun: A travesty.
Le Figaro: —amid ongoing concerns about their current activities.
Sun: Enough.
Variety: Much has been written about the financing of the motion picture, namely that you yourself paid the entire fifty-three-million-dollar budget.
Sun: Not me personally. My production company, Black Marble. But you are correct. We financed the picture on our own. When I believe in a project, I am not afraid to prove it.
Variety: So little is known of your background, Mr. Sun. You are a young man. Can you let us in on the secret of your vast wealth?
Sun: Hard work, plenty of play, and Samson Sun a very happy boy.
Jean Renaud: One more question, ladies and gentlemen.
Daily Mail: Will you all be attending the premiere?
Sun: Of course. We are family.
Chapter 36
Gothenburg, Sweden
Mattias dug his hands into the pockets of his reefer jacket and crossed Andersmark Park, head lowered to combat the howling wind. Mid-May and it felt like December. Already five years in Sweden, and he still wondered if he’d ever get used to the cold. He missed his home and the hot, dry winds of the Sahara more than ever. It was just past three in the afternoon and he was on his way home from work as an apprentice baker. He liked the job, despite having to rise at two a.m. each morning. The bakery was warm, smelled wonderfully—a far cry from the mud-brick ovens and open fires of his childhood—and he respected his boss, Mr. Nordstrom. The cardamom buns were the best thing he’d ever eaten. The clients, when he worked at the counter, were uniformly welcoming and seemed to care deeply for his well-being. Of course, they knew his story. Everyone in Gothenburg did. At least as much as anyone who hadn’t been there could know it. It was better that way. Some things even the most forgiving people could not come to understand.
Mattias stopped by school and picked up his twin sons, Lucas and Leo. They had names from home, too, but he wanted them to be as Swedish as possible. The color of their skin, even diluted by half, made things hard enough. Not that the Swedes would admit to it. They thought their society to be colorblind. Almost, thought Mattias, warmth in his heart. It was a wonderful country and he was ever grateful.
He gave each of the boys—already four years old, inshallah—an almond-paste cake and held their hands as they crossed Ulfspargattan. His home was one of a dozen row houses, two stories, large windows, painted a bright barnyard red to stave off the bleak Scandinavian winters. His rent was twelve hundred euros a month, more than a third of his monthly salary, but the government gave him some help, and Gitte, his wife, chipped in when she could.
She was working at the kitchen table when they entered, a writer, of course, waiting to be published. But talented, Mattias thought, though as a child he’d never read a novel. Novels were haram. Forbidden. He was permitted to read only one book, the Koran, and by fourteen, he had memorized it. Gitte rose to greet them, kisses all around, then tea and snacks, before settling the children before the television. Two hours a day. Not a minute more. That was the rule.
Dinner was at six o’clock sharp, early because of Mattias’s schedule. Tonight: turkey meatballs, gravy, lingonberries, with egg noodles and black bread. The IKEA special. If Gitte didn’t make it as a novelist, she could find work as a cook. Mattias was still getting used to having enough to eat. His full belly felt like an affront to those without.
That evening, Mattias insisted on clearing the table. No one looked twice at the scar running the length of his forearm as he gathered the plates. His boys called it “the caterpillar”—pink, reticulated, and uneven. He’d learned to keep it hidden at the bakery. One too many a customer had been unable to stifle a gasp. “Grusig,” one had said. Gruesome. He didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. He didn’t like being reminded either. The nightmares still came, all these years later.
A last sip from the jar—the water hot, murky, dizzy with grease and dead flies. Whose would it be? The rusted gutting saw wasn’t enough. Mattias’s hands were stronger. One man lived, the other died. Survival on the open water.
Mattias kissed the children good night at eight o’clock. Gitte would tuck them in at ten, after reading them a story. His life was a fairy tale. A Western fairy tale, but so what? To know that his children would want for nothing…that was enough. More than he could have dreamed of.
He went upstairs and got ready for bed, kneeled, said his prayers. Twice a day was enough. If his bed faced east, west, north, or south, he didn’t know. He was sound asleep when Gitte slid in next to him, pressing her cool body against his back, wrapping an arm around him. Her kiss barely registered.
He woke at one fifty-five, five minutes before the alarm sounded. Rising from bed, he padded to the bathroom. The tile floor was warm beneath his feet…heated from beneath. A wonder. He showered and dressed, clothing laid out before bedtime so as not to wake Gitte. He looked in the mirror. Sharp cheekbones—though nowhere near as sharp as before—slim lips, liquid eyes, the regard of a warrior. Forever and always. Inshallah. God is great.
Only now did he alter his routine from the one he’d followed these last years.
Let it begin.
Mattias left the bathroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer. He found the roll of bills tucked into a pair of socks. Three thousand five hundred euros, all that he’d saved since coming to Sweden. There was more, much more, but he wanted her to know that this was from him and him alone.
He placed the roll in Gitte’s drawer, in the wool socks she wore for cross-country skiing. She would find them at the right time. He put on his belt and shoes, then took a look at this woman who had captured his heart. Blond, a little heavy, a gap between her front teeth, rosy cheeks—as different from him as chalk from cheese. Or perhaps, snow from coal. And yet…love.
Then, no hesitation in his step or his heart, he left.
His phone and wallet and passport remained on the dresser.
A man waited downstairs. It was the man from the mosque. A Saudi. His name was Abdul. “Sheikh Abdul,” Mattias called him. As always, he was perfectly dressed. Suit, necktie, an overcoat that would cost a month’s wages.
“Tonight is the night,” he said. “Peace be unto the Prophet.”
“May peace be unto him,” said Mattias.
“Did you check your wife’s bank account?”
Mattias said he had. One million euros transferred from the Bank of Liechtenstein, though he could neither pronounce the name nor had any idea where the place might be.
“Do not worry,” said Sheikh Abdul. “I will look in on your wife from time to time. She will want for nothing. As it should be.”
A car drew up. A man who could be Mattias’s brother sat behind the wheel. Mattias said goodbye to Sheikh Abdul. He had memorized his instructions long ago. He knew where to go, what to say, and what was expected of him. It was really not so difficult.
“Shut the door, Ibrahim,” said the driver, using Mattias’s birth name. “It’s freezing.”
Mattias slammed the door and put on his safety belt. “How far?”
The driver gave him a look. “You better have taken a wicked piss, my brother. We’re going to be driving a long time.”
And despite himself, Mattias laughed.
It was time to give back.
Allahu Akbar.
God is great.
Chapter 37
Singapore
London Li hadn’t been in the bullpen for a mont
h. It was just past nine as she made her way across the floor of the Financial Times office in Singapore, offering a “Good morning” or “How are you?” to the journalists she knew (too few) and several she didn’t. She went from desk to desk, speaking with reporters who had written pieces on Harrington-Weiss over the past few years and who might have contacts at the secretive bank. Doing so, she managed to put together an organigram of sorts with names and positions. Ivan S., head of investment banking. Sheila G., capital markets. Freddy N., equity research. It was a start.
Just as an army needed perfect cooperation between its branches—infantry, artillery, intelligence—to mount a successful invasion, a bank needed the same to underwrite a billion-dollar bond issue. No one person did it all.
In addition, London asked who the big players were these days, the alphas. Only a top dog could go to the Indonesian minister of finance and convince her that HW and HW alone should underwrite her sovereign wealth fund to the tune of six billion dollars.
For all the power a bank’s name might bring to a deal—the clout of a long history and the allure of a burnished reputation—in the end, finance turned out to be a people business. Deals were closed on the power of personality. The highest paid bankers, the highest ranking execs, the “big swinging dicks,” didn’t get to where they were by sitting at a desk crunching numbers. You would never see an equity analyst seated in the royal box at Wimbledon. But if you knew who to look for, you’d see the top dealmaker at Barclays, and ten to one, he’d be joined by a face you’d seen on the cover of Vogue magazine.
London knew plenty of these bankers. To a person, they were brilliant, charismatic, larger-than-life characters who filled any room they entered. Personalities in their own right. Whatever “it” was, they possessed it in spades. Like she’d said, “alphas.”
In the space of a few hours, she’d assembled a list of six executives at Harrington-Weiss who might have overseen the deals in question.
She found an empty desk—there were too many for her taste—and called HW’s public relations department. Stating that she was doing an article on the firm’s work with Asian governments to raise money for the SWFs, she asked to interview the bankers who ran the deals. The PR person was all too happy to help, though unfortunately interviews were out of the question. HW policy. She could, however, provide answers to any of London’s questions on an unattributed basis, and, whoop-de-do, even hand her a quote from the chairwoman of HW Asia herself. How did that sound? Was two weeks soon enough?
London hung up the phone, middle finger raised to express her gratitude.
“That for me?”
London lifted her eyes to see Mandy Blume, FT’s managing editor, arms crossed, glaring at her.
“HW. Jerks.”
“Not getting anywhere? You could have asked me.” Mandy was fifty, blond, battered, and as elegant as the day is long, a longtime expat who’d gotten her start chasing celebrities for a Fleet Street tabloid before making the jump to the respectable side of the street. The side where women didn’t show their boobs on page 3. Mandy’s husband, Michael, ran HW Asia’s foreign-exchange desk.
“Really?” said London. “Really” because it was verboten to mix the personal and professional sides of a journalist’s life.
“You working a story? I haven’t seen you around in a while. Don’s about to type a letter with your name on it. Give me something positive to tell him so he’ll tear it up.”
Donald Manning, the publisher, was the executive responsible for all hiring and firing decisions.
“Are you serious?” asked London.
Mandy didn’t bother saying yes or no. Her look said it all.
“I think I have a big one,” said London.
“How big?”
“Madoff times ten.”
Mandy raised a skeptical brow as she pulled over a chair from a vacant desk. Prove it. She was dressed in a pencil skirt the color of clotted cream and a flashy striped men’s dress shirt, opened a button farther than her mum would like. Her hair was teased and frosted and fell about her face in a perfectly controlled chaos that had to cost London’s weekly salary. It was good to be married to an I-banker. Her skin was pale and papery, decorated with a network of lines no amount of makeup could conceal, the result of thirty years smoking Players, a habit she’d only recently broken. Instead of a cigarette, she held a pencil between her fingers and tapped it on London’s desk. “And HW’s involved?”
“Looks like it.”
“How sure are you?”
“A hundred percent,” said London, eyes locked on her boss. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck.” Mandy exhaled angrily. In that instant, she abandoned her married name and everything that went with being Mrs. Michael Blume, and returned to being simply Mandy Rosen, the girl they’d called “Rupert’s meanest dog.” “I’m ready,” she said. “Spill.”
London leaned closer and gave Mandy a detailed summary of everything she had to date: the email from R that had put her on PetroSaud’s trail, Benson Chow’s corroboration that the Asian fund mentioned had to be Indonesia’s, followed by her own suspicion that if there was one, there had to be others—and there were. In fact, seven sovereign wealth funds had worked with PetroSaud, though their complicity in any illegal act remained to be seen. And finally, Benson’s bombshell that every one of the funds involved with PetroSaud had been brought to market by Harrington-Weiss, and Harrington-Weiss alone. Somewhere in there she tossed in her encounter with Nadya Sukarno and her belief that the Indonesian minister of finance was as guilty as sin.
“You think Michael knows who ran those deals?” asked London.
“Of course he does,” said Mandy. “I’m always amazed a sixty-story office building is big enough to hold all those egos. No one does a billion-dollar deal without making sure everyone in the firm knows about it. Probably hires a brass band to march up and down the hallways trumpeting the news. You’d think people that smart and successful would have a little self-confidence. Hardly. They are the most insecure, hypercompetitive assembly of geniuses you’ve ever seen.” Mandy laughed thinly. “Of course, I can’t ask Michael. I mean, I won’t.”
London hadn’t expected any different. “I was thinking of dredging up the prospectuses from all the offerings. Research has to have copies. I’ll bet we’ll come across a common name, someone at HW who worked all the deals.”
Mandy wagged a finger at London. “Wrong side of the animal. You’re looking at the ass, not the snout.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You never worked at a bank, did you?”
“No.”
“When a client closes a deal, an IPO, a secondary offering, if they acquire a company or sell off a division…or”—and here, she looked directly at London—“if they complete a successful investment fund, a billion-dollar one, they throw a party.”
“A party?”
“Champagne, caviar, beef Wellington, white truffles…tous les accompagnements.”
London smiled. “I see now.”
“Ten years ago I would have added coke and hookers. Alas, times have changed.” Mandy sighed. “Anyhow, my love, no self-respecting investment authority would throw a party without inviting the press.”
“If your picture doesn’t land in the paper, did the party even take place?”
“Not the papers. The glossies. The gossip bibles.”
“The Tatler,” said London.
“Bingo.”
London crowded in beside Mandy Blume, both seated at the managing editor’s battleship-sized desk, eyes glued to the twenty-seven-inch screen of her iMac Pro. The door was closed, the blinds drawn. For the past hour they had scoured back issues of the Singapore Tatler, Asia’s preeminent chronicler of high society, searching for photographs taken at parties celebrating the closings of investment funds for (in order) Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and India. London, for one, was growing tired of looking at so many magnificently bejeweled, begowned, and be-dinner-jacketed men and women, al
l of whom appeared to be having the times of their lives. They were a cosmopolitan, multinational, multiethnic lot. They had one thing in common. They were rich. Filthy rich.
She and Mandy found their man early on. It had to be a man. Tall, raven-haired, severe, never a smile, not handsome, but a commanding presence, whose laser-like black eyes bored holes in the camera. Whenever there was royalty—a king, queen, prince, or maharajah—he was present, hobnobbing with the select few, nearly always the only “commoner” in the photograph. Whenever there was a head of state—president, prime minister, chairman—he was there, embraced as an equal. The pictures had been taken over the course of four years, but to their eyes he was everywhere at once. The thread that bound them all together.
Or, as London put it, the common denominator. And, yes, he was an alpha.
Hadrian Lester, vice chairman of Harrington-Weiss.
“It’s ‘Lecter,’” said Mandy. “That’s what they call him at the firm. He’s a serial killer. He eats the competition alive.”
“I hope not with fava beans,” said London.
“Oh yes,” said Mandy. “And Chianti, though I’ve heard he prefers Château Pétrus at ten thousand euros a bottle.”
“I know who he is,” said London. “He’s married to that Europop singer. Beatrice something.”
“He must be doing it for love, then,” said Mandy, rolling her eyes. “Son of a bitch.”
“He’s in on it, all right. Maybe the instigator. He has to be.”
“You don’t think it’s the other one, the Saudi? The smiling Arab?”
There was another face that had been present at all the parties, though not a banker. Tarek Al-Obeidi, the managing partner of PetroSaud, slim, silver haired, dignified, with a smile that could melt an iceberg.
“No,” said London. “He couldn’t get in the room where it started. It had to be Hadrian Lester giving the pitch. PetroSaud came afterward, once they agreed to use HW. ‘And by the way, you might want to consider using my friends in Saudi Arabia if you’d care to line your own pockets.’”
The Palace Page 21