Shadowed Paradise

by Blair Bancroft

Wordlessly, Claire read the list of more than thirty names. “Not all of them,” she said when she finished, “but the ones I recognize are all clients of InterBank. I know little about them beyond their names, but we frequently use this house for entertaining the bank’s many international customers. The names I recognize are people who have been guests here over the past year or so.”

  When Claire had marked each name she recognized, Chalmers took the list back and handed her a photo. “Can you identify any of these men?” he asked.

  Claire frowned at the group photo of eight men, all in Arab dress. With hair covered by head scarves and faces covered by beards, identification was difficult. But a certain few, she discovered, were familiar. Dutifully, Claire attempted to put names each face. If she concentrated on doing what was asked of her, maybe she could repress the questions that were threatening to turn her mind to jelly.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Langdon, we appreciate your cooperation,” Chalmers said after Claire managed to identify five of the men.

  Claire got the distinct impression she had just passed a test. They were feeling her out. For what?

  “Mrs. Langdon,” Douglas Chalmers said, obviously choosing his words with care, “we’d very much like to talk to your husband about these people. We are investigating the American side of possible irregularities in InterBank’s methods of operation. We believe your husband could be helpful to our investigation. Do you think you could persuade him to talk to us?”

  Persuade? Persuade Jim to talk to the FBI? An odd—insulting—choice of words. “I don’t know why he should have to be persuaded,” Claire replied coolly, making no secret of her annoyance. “He would be happy to talk with you at any time.”

  “Mrs. Langdon,” Douglas Chalmers explained patiently, “we cannot approach your husband at work, so we need your help in arranging a meeting with your husband. Some place away from work and away from his home. We have no wish to make any further intrusion on your–ah–cookie baking.”

  Inwardly, Claire recoiled. What was happening here? InterBank was just that, a bank. A pillar of respectability. Just because they dealt with money on an international scale . . .

  The FBI was sitting in her parlor. Talking investigation. Oh, dear God.

  The agents were getting up, saying goodbye, reiterating how important it was for Jim Langdon to call them.

  “You know the rest,” Claire said to Brad, abruptly breaking off her story to take a long swallow of beer. “In a year’s time we went from luxury to major disaster. Everyone talks of Diane Lake as if she were some kind of particularly bitchy whore, and she’s probably never been guilty of anything more than overweening ambition. You think I’m some fragile flower on an ivory pedestal, don’t you? Sweet little Claire, the straight, old-fashioned home girl. Well, let’s be very clear here. I’ve consorted with robbers, cheats, con artists, smugglers, terrorists, thugs of all classes and probably murderers. Men who moved money on a grand scale, a million, a hundred, five hundred million at a time. Men who stole whole countries blind. And I was so stupid I didn’t even know it.”

  Tears rolled down Claire’s cheeks. She turned her head away, appalled that the shame was still so scalding, the hurt and humiliation coursing through her in bitter waves. “Go back to Diane,” she gasped, hiccuping back a sob. “I bet she’s not on anybody’s list of suspects. Go away, Brad. I’m not a good person to know. I spent the last two years trying to fight all those government alphabets off. And in the end I lost. The house, the apartment, the Rolls, the bank accounts, the so-called friends. Everything. Gone.”

  Brad wanted to take her in his arms, kiss the pain away, but her shoulders were stiff, unyielding. This was no skinned knee waiting for the quick fix of a hug and smile. And then there was that most vital question of all. What happened to Jim Langdon? Was Claire a widow, or sitting out the time her husband was in jail?

  So he asked her.

  Chapter Nine

  Claire fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, blew her nose, wiped her tear-streaked face. She kept her eyes focused on the distant horizon far out to sea. When she spoke, her voice was toneless.

  “I knew things were bad from the moment I told Jim about the FBI. He turned absolutely white. I’d been so sure it was all a mistake. I was wrong.”

  With one finger Claire traced the face of Handsome Dan, the Yale bulldog, staring pugnaciously from the side of her beer stein. “Jim didn’t give me any excuses or explanations. He just took Doug’s card and said he’d call him.” She paused, biting her lip. “Several days later, when I asked if he’d met with Doug, Jim said he had. After that, for a long time—months—he never said a word about it.”

  So it was Doug, Brad thought sourly. Somewhere, somehow FBI Special Agent Chalmers had become Doug.

  “Every once in a while,” Claire added, “I’d ask Jim if he’d met with the FBI again. He’d mumble a short yes, and I’d back off. It was obvious he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about it. And I was a coward. If he told me the truth, I knew I wouldn’t like it, so I never pressed him. I admit it,” Claire murmured, head down, “I didn’t want to know.”

  Brad ached for her. Under the circumstances who could blame a woman for wrapping herself and her child in a cocoon and attempting to shut out the world? “I was in the hospital about that time,” he said. “I thought I had a charmed life until I zigged when I should have zagged. When the InterBank story broke, I was just getting well enough to be bored. I devoured the newspapers, paid close attention to the TV news. Friends filled in some of the lesser known details.” He paused, slowly reconstructing memories more than two years old. “There was some sort of drama . . . something about a plane . . .” He broke off, swore feelingly beneath his breath. He had bulled his way into the china shop.

  On the day after the visit from the FBI, Claire bought a diary. She kept it under the mattress which, she knew, was a pretty stupid place for it, but in a home filled with antiques she had never been able to discover any secret drawers. Feeling compelled—by guilt?—she examined her many guests with a new eye, listened with a sharper ear, forced herself to remember names and faces and dates until she was free to write them down. She knew she was powerless to change what was going to happen, but it made her feel better. She was, at least, doing something.

  Other than her diary, it seemed as if the pebble cast by Special Agent Chalmers disappeared into oblivion after creating that first ripple in their lives. The continent-hopping clients of InterBank continued to party, to gamble at the private tables in the Langdon’s game room, to enjoy—in the luxury of the Langdon bedrooms—the women who were seldom their wives. Claire waited for the other shoe to drop, wondering if anyone else could see the strain beneath the smiling, debonair figure of her husband.

  Ten months passed before cracks began to appear in the colossus that was InterBank. Slowly, quietly, unnoticed by the majority of the public, a grand jury began to return an ever-increasing number of indictments. The Bedford parties went on, but faces became taut, the atmosphere strained. The gambling was less frenetic, the stakes less daring.

  But the cash kept coming in—stolen money, drug money, money that would never be taxed—for without the InterBank laundry machine the vast amount of greenbacks might as well have been Monopoly money. InterBank never refused a deposit. It continued to fulfill its boast of being a full-service bank, always ready and willing to serve its customers, any time, any where, any how.

  A week before Jamie’s sixth birthday Claire was in F.A.O. Schwarz. It was mid-November, the store already resplendent with Christmas displays of the finest and most expensive toys in the world. Claire was admiring a stuffed giraffe five feet high when she became aware of a man standing too close behind her, invading her space. A vaguely familiar voice spoke close to her ear. “Mrs. Langdon, it’s Doug Chalmers, FBI. I’d like to talk to you. Perhaps you’d like to consider a train set. That area looks pretty quiet at the moment.”

  Dumbly, Claire nodded, wandering casually toward the elaborat
e layout of toy trains. “Mrs. Langdon,” Chalmers said, as Claire watched three separate trains wind their way through a maze of tracks and tunnels, past miniature villages and farms, “I don’t want to frighten you, but your husband’s our primary witness. He knows how the laundry chain works, who and how much. That’s dangerous information.”

  A shrill whistle punctuated the FBI agent’s words. A freight train rumbled past a crossing, disappeared behind a hill, the tiny crossing gate slowly rose to its upright position. “If we give Jim protection,” Doug Chalmers continued, “everyone knows he’s our source. If we pull him out, we lose any information we might get at this critical time when everyone is beginning to panic.”

  After one horrified glance at Chalmers, Claire kept her attention on the trains, which continued their endless journeys to nowhere.

  “We need him, Claire. He’s vital to taking down InterBank, but there’s a risk. Jim doesn’t want to worry you, but I felt you have a right to know. Things should be okay. You live in a fortress, Jim goes to work in a chauffeured Rolls. The driver is one of ours. All I’m saying is, don’t be naive about this. Be careful. Keep your eyes open.’”

  “Are you saying Jamie and I are in danger?” Claire whispered, incredulous.

  “Probably not, but we’re talking about some very bad people. It’s not just a matter of money, but a matter of Jim’s knowing—possibly literally—where the bodies are buried. Just watch yourself, all right?”

  Claire felt a firm, comforting hand on her shoulder, a card was thrust in her hand. “In case you lost the first one,” Doug Chalmers murmured, and was gone.

  Her mind blank, Claire stared at the small white cardboard rectangle while the trains continued to roll around the tracks—moving mindlessly, inexorably, in the unseen, unknown direction of their programming. Unable to change directions, stop, reverse course, or let trapped passengers off. One tiny glitch and they would all hurtle toward destruction. Stupid, stupid little trains charging toward disaster.

  Fortunately, as the weeks dragged on, Claire’s terrifying conversation with Doug Chalmers appeared to be much ado about nothing. Indictments continued to be handed down. New York insiders were becoming aware that InterBank was in trouble, but the full extent of the disaster was such a well-kept secret that the employees, from bank president to the lowliest teller, were all at work when the FBI and the International Banking Commission came to shut the bank down.

  Government power brokers associated with InterBank, its foreign employees, and depositors drifted away as if on a cloud of smoke and mist. The mostly American management of the foreign-owned InterBank took the fall.

  As the government’s star witness, Jim Langdon was hidden away. Protective custody, the feds called it. Because of Jim’s cooperation, Doug assured Claire the worst he could get was minimal time in a Club Fed. But it was too soon to let down her guard, he cautioned. Claire should continue to keep her eyes open and her wits about her at all times.

  As Claire hung up the phone after one of Chalmers’s weekly calls, she had to admit that as much as she wanted to hate him, she couldn’t. Doug Chalmers was doing his job with perhaps more compassion than the Langdon family deserved. And yet . . . how could she have been so blind? If only she’d paid more attention, asked more questions, insisted Jim find another job.

  In need of busy work, Claire fished her diary out from under the mattress and began to record her conversation with Doug Chalmers. There was little else to write now. The parties were long gone, as were nearly all her so-called friends and sunshine neighbors. She and Jamie existed in limbo, cut off from the world. Eating. Sleeping. Drying tears. I’m sorry Daddy’s trip is taking so long, Jamie. But you know he loves you and misses you and will come home as soon as he can.

  Some day. In a year or two. Or three.

  “Mrs. Langdon?”

  Startled, Claire dropped her pen, splayed her hand over the diary. “Yes, Laura?” she inquired, overcoming a sudden spurt of fear that Jamie’s nanny might see what she was doing. What had happened to her lovely secure world? How could she fear being discovered writing in her own diary in her own bedroom in her own house? The whole thing was absurd.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Langdon,” Laura said, “but I thought I should tell you that Jamie is late returning from school.”

  Claire glanced at her watch. Forty minutes past the time Bob Jeffers usually brought Jamie home. “Did you ask Mrs. Jeffers if Bob was running late today?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the nanny replied, unable to conceal her anxiety. No one in the household remained untouched by the disaster that had enveloped the venerable old home and its inhabitants.

  This wasn’t happening, Claire thought. Not Jamie, not Jamie, not Jamie! It had to be something as simple as a flat tire, an errand Bob needed to run. She was panicking over nothing. Nothing. Oh, God!

  Bob Jeffers didn’t answer his cell phone.

  Maybe they’d stopped for ice cream . . .

  The school principal, still at her desk, assured Claire Jamie had been picked up at the usual time. The mothers of Jamie’s two best friends hadn’t seen him. Nor the candy shop, grocery store, or video arcade. Claire—hands shaking, heart pounding—called Doug Chalmers and the Bedford police, in that order.

  Bob Jeffers was found slumped unconscious over the wheel at the side of the winding country road that led to the Langdon mansion. There was no sign of Jamie.

  The game room of the Bedford house was soon bristling with high tech electronics and bustling with the efficient comings and goings of an FBI crew who gave every evidence of knowing what they were doing. Unfortunately, Claire thought bitterly, not one of them knew any more about Jamie’s whereabouts than she did.

  “I want Jim!” Claire demanded, glaring at Doug Chalmers.

  “I can let you talk to him, Claire,” the FBI agent told her, “but I can’t let him out.” He looked as if he actually regretted it. “Taking Jamie has got to be a move to keep Jim from testifying. They’ll be watching the house, waiting for him to appear. I’ve got to keep him safe.”

  “Jamie’s out there somewhere with God knows who,” Claire said from between clenched teeth. “So just what are you going to do about it?”

  Chalmers sighed. Taking Claire’s arm, he steered her toward a burgundy leather sofa at one end of the long room. “We have to wait for the kidnappers to contact us, Claire. There’s nothing else we can do.” He signaled the hovering Consuela to pour a cup of coffee.

  Claire’s hand shook as she accepted the cup, the dark brown liquid splashing into the saucer. “Have you heard anything about Bob Jeffers?”

  “He’s going to be fine. Looks like he’ll come out of this with nothing more than a headache.”

  “You’ve told his wife?”

  “Yes. I had someone drive her to the hospital.”

  Claire murmured her thanks, and the wait began.

  Over the next several hours she spoke with Jim three times. As always, he sounded confident, optimistic, everything’s-going-to-be-fine. Why then did she feel such dread? Perhaps because she’d finally recognized that Jim Langdon would have taken the final tumbril ride to the guillotine certain that he would be rescued.

  There was, however, a different note to his final call shortly after midnight. Claire doubted the agents monitoring their conversation noticed the change in Jim’s tone, the finality of his words, but when she hung up she was filled with a sense of foreboding. Jim was going to break out of the safe house, she was certain of it. No ransom message had come to the house in Bedford, not a word to the roomful of waiting agents and their masses of technical equipment. Yet a message must have been slipped past Jim’s guards. He was going to run, do what had to be done.

  She never dreamed how high a price he would be asked to pay.

  Doug Chalmers, whose attempt at sleep in one of the mansion’s guest bedrooms was equally fitful, was waked shortly after six in the morning by the insistent ringing of his cell phone. “Shit!” he explode
d as he listened. He was still swearing long after he flipped his cell phone cover back in place, wishing for something sturdy he could slam instead. What the fucking hell did that idiot think he was doing dropping off a condo balcony in the middle of the night? Did the kidnappers get to him? Or was he simply on his way to his wife?

  His fury and frustration tightly in check, Chalmers knocked on Claire’s door. She was so calm when he gave her the news, he wondered if she’d gone into shock. It was almost as if she’d known. And yet he’d gone over the tapes of Claire’s conversation with her husband the evening before three times and heard no hint that Jim Langdon was planning to bolt. The man had simply disappeared.

  Claire, back at her post on the burgundy leather couch in the game room, waited, stomach churning. Jamie and Jim, both gone. What if she never saw them again?

  Impossible! She wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept it.

  The hours dragged by. The phone, when it rang, never signaled anything more significant than another report of failure. Between prayers, Claire cataloged every might-have-been and should-have-been in her life, made solemn vows for the future, begged God yet again for the deliverance of her loved ones

  At eleven-thirty that morning there was news. Jim Langdon had taken off from a small Westchester County airport in InterBank’s Piper Mojave, just as he had many times before. The mechanic on duty did not realize anyone was looking for Langdon until he was long gone. A small plane, flying low, was literally beneath the notice of Air Traffic Control. Jim Langdon could be anywhere.

  Claire lowered her head and smiled. Jim was not simply intelligent. He was strong-willed and resilient. He was going to get away. Disappear some place where no one could find him. He would not testify. And Jamie would be returned to her.

  Must be returned to her.

  Fantasy, pure and simple. Claire never doubted what the hard-headed, grim-faced agents were thinking. They’d lost their star witness and the only way Jamie Langdon would be found, if ever, was as a small lifeless corpse.