Swimming with Sharks

by Nele Neuhaus

  Alex quickly estimated the sum in her head. She had assumed that Zack would buy ten million dollars of stock, but it seemed that he’d bought ten times that amount.

  “Just like you said,” Justin continued, “the deal is off and Whithers stock has crashed over the last few hours. It closed at twenty-nine and a quarter, which means that MPM has lost thirty million so far. It looks like it’ll be much more.”

  Oliver and Mark looked at Alex expectantly.

  “No one will touch Whithers tomorrow,” Alex said slowly. “The stock crashed and MPM must regain its position in the morning. They won’t be able to get it done. There’s no way that they’ll get a hundred million together.”

  “Which means what?”

  “MPM is bankrupt. There’ll be an SEC investigation. And they’ll find out who’s behind MPM.”

  “Levy and Vitali…”

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “I can’t imagine that they’ll risk it. Levy will go to jail for ten years.”

  “What could they do to prevent that?”

  “Not much.” Alex pondered his question. “Maybe change the owners.”

  Suddenly, she sensed something disastrous brewing behind her back. Zack would blame her alone for the Whithers deal blowing up. Sergio wasn’t on her side. It was two to one against her at the very least. Because no one knew yet how much she had found out, their best solution was to pin all the blame on her. Then she would be in for insider trading—big time.

  “I’ll check it out,” Justin said and hung up. Alex briefly reported to Mark and Oliver what Justin had told her. While the two of them discussed the news, Alex was thinking intensely. Then she sat upright.

  “I need to talk to Zack immediately,” she said.

  “But why?” Mark asked. “He hates you like the plague since the Syncrotron deal.”

  “I don’t care how much of an asshole he is,” Alex said as she stood up. “The pressure’s on him too. I had no idea he would buy that much stock.”

  “Okay,” Oliver said, “but you won’t go alone. We’ll come with you.”

  Mark signaled for the waiter and paid, and then they left the restaurant.

  “Let me get my wallet. I left it in my apartment,” Oliver said.

  While Oliver went inside, Alex and Mark waited at the building’s entrance.

  “Zack will be absolutely furious,” Mark said. “I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to speak with him. What are you trying to get out of it?”

  “Damn it, Mark, I thought that he’d lose five or ten million, but a hundred million is—” The sentence caught in Alex’s throat as she watched a black limousine drive up the street.

  “What is it?” Mark asked.

  “Come inside, quick!” Alex pulled him into the hallway.

  The limousine stopped directly in front of the building.

  “What’s wrong?” Mark didn’t understand what was going on, but he followed her up the stairs. They ran into Oliver in front of his apartment.

  “Sergio is here!” Alex exclaimed. Oliver immediately opened the door, and they sought refuge inside the apartment. Seconds later, the doorbell started buzzing like crazy. The three of them looked helplessly at one another.

  “Police, open the door!” they heard a voice shout, and then someone banged a fist on the door. “Open the door or we’ll break it down!”

  “Shit,” Mark whispered, scared. “What are we going to do?”

  Alex was sobered by the fear.

  “He’s coming after me,” she whispered. “Can I get out of here somehow?”

  “You can get onto the roof of the adjacent warehouse from the balcony,” Oliver said nervously, “but it’s at least ten feet down.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’ll kill me if he finds me here. And you too.”

  Mark turned as white as a ghost. The banging on the door grew louder. Alex ran into the living room and tore open the balcony door.

  “Alex,” Oliver hissed. He grabbed her arm as she raised her leg over the balcony railing. “You can’t…Alex!”

  “I have no choice,” she replied. “I don’t want to get you into trouble. Take care of yourselves. I’ll be in touch!”

  Before Oliver could say another word, she jumped ten feet from the balustrade down onto the warehouse roof and disappeared in the darkness like a shadow.

  Sergio stood in the hallway outside Oliver Skerritt’s door, his hands deep in the pockets of his cashmere coat. He was dead certain that Alex was sitting next to this guy right behind the door. He even thought he could smell her. Armando and Freddy looked at their boss and waited for his orders.

  “Break down the door!” Sergio ordered. “I want to get into this damned apartment.”

  Then the door opened. A dark-haired man with glasses looked at them, displeased. Sergio recognized his face from the countless photos that his people had taken of him and Alex. He even knew what he looked like during sex. He used all his might to repress his fury, pushing past him into the loft before Oliver could say a word. Although it was fairly large, it was could fit into a single salon of Sergio’s Park Avenue apartment.

  “Hey!” The journalist ran after him. “What the hell is going on here? Why are you invading my apartment? Who are you?”

  “Where is she?” Sergio looked everywhere, even the bathroom. He shoved Oliver, who looked terrified. He encountered Mark in the living room and ignored him. Then Sergio tore open the bedroom door expecting to find Alex in bed with wide-open, frightened eyes. The blood rushed in his ears. He’d beaten her down to the point that she couldn’t let herself be seen in public for three weeks. But the bed was empty. Sergio charged into the room, pulled open the closet doors, and even got down on his knees to look under the bed. There was no trace of her. Did he get it all wrong?

  “Where are you, you little whore?” He angrily ground his teeth and walked back to the living room. There, his men watched in silence as Sergio grabbed Oliver by his hair.

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “Who are you looking for anyway?” Oliver wheezed.

  “Alex Sontheim.” The urge to kill shone in Sergio’s eyes.

  “Why would she be here?”

  “Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?” His anger exploded inside of him, and he rammed his fist into Oliver’s face; he felt a cruel sense of satisfaction when Oliver’s glasses cracked and the blood splattered from his nose.

  “Alex hasn’t been here in months,” Oliver mumbled. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Sergio stared at him for a few seconds. “If you are lying to me,” he hissed, “you’re dead!”

  Just minutes later, the nightmare was over and Oliver and Mark found themselves locked in the windowless bathroom. Oliver sat down on the edge of the bathtub, breathing heavily, and Mark let himself slide onto the floor. His whole body shook in fear. He had always been horrified by any kind of physical violence.

  “What kind of an animal is this guy,” he muttered. Oliver’s cell phone rang again. He rummaged through his jacket pocket until he found it.

  “I checked the commercial registry,” Justin shouted. “You remember that a company was the owner of MPM, this SeaStar thing, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Oliver nodded and grimaced because his nose hurt like hell. “We printed out the certificates.”

  “But now MPM is listed as owned by Alex and Zachary St. John.”

  “Holy shit.” Oliver rubbed his sore wrists, trying to take in what this meant.

  Alex really was in grave danger—and she had no idea.

  Alex’s heart pounded furiously against her ribs as she darted toward Sixth Avenue under the protection of the building walls. A police siren was howling somewhere, but the street was deserted. She managed to finally hail a cab at West Houston Street.

  “Battery Park City,” she said to the taxi driver, leaning back in relief when the young Puerto Rican hit the pedal. She hoped that Sergio wouldn’t harm Oliver and Mark. Her thoughts were racing as the cab drove south
through nighttime Manhattan. She still couldn’t believe that Zack had been so foolish as to buy so many shares. Even if the deal had gone through, it would have triggered the SEC’s curiosity. But then it occurred to her that Sergio also had SEC officials and NYSE board members on his bribery payroll. It was likely nothing would have happened.

  Fifteen minutes later, Alex reached Zack’s building. She asked the cab driver to wait and walked in, but the doorman said Zach was away. She climbed back into the taxi and told the driver to take her to the financial district. Maybe Zack was still in his office. Alex frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what to tell him, but she no matter what it couldn’t wait. Tomorrow morning, they’d throw her and Zack to the wolves. Maybe she could convince Zack that it was time to take action together against Levy and Sergio. It was clear in her mind that neither of them would shy away from sacrificing her.

  She got out of the cab at Broadway and Wall Street then walked the rest of the way to the LMI Building. The main entrance was closed at this time of night, and she hesitated to use her badge to get in. She knew that every swipe of the card was registered in the central computer. She glanced quickly at her watch. It was just after two thirty in the morning, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She opened the door to the delivery entrance with her badge, and then stopped when she spotted the night porter strolling toward the restrooms. Alex snuck into the lobby and reached the open door to the stairwell. She couldn’t take the elevator because it would have instantly alarmed the security guards. She prided herself on being in good shape, but she still needed to stop and catch her breath on the tenth and fourteenth floors.

  Alex trembled with anxiety as she opened the fire door leading to the executive offices. Zack’s office was the fourth on the left. A narrow strip of light escaped through a crack in the door. He was actually still here. Alex took a deep breath and then knocked at the door. When she entered the office, what she saw in the dim light of the desk lamp made her blood freeze. She wanted to run away, screaming her head off, but she stood there petrified. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  “Damn it,” Oliver cursed, “she’s not answering!”

  It was the tenth time he reached Alex’s voice mail.

  “We’ve got to do something,” he said as he rubbed his sore arm. Where could he find Alex to inform her about the outrageous information Justin had just delivered? MPM would be bankrupt tomorrow. The press would jump on it as soon as they learned that LMI’s managing director and head of M&A were jointly running a company making millions through insider trading. Alex was done for, even if it could eventually be proven in court that she had nothing to do with MPM. Her reputation on Wall Street would be ruined once and for all. Oliver’s first—and hopefully last—personal encounter with Sergio Vitali confirmed everything that he had unearthed about him over the years. He shuddered again at the memory of the ice-cold look in his blue eyes.

  “We’ll never get this door open,” Mark said despondently. Oliver rummaged around in the drawers of the bathroom cabinet for any object he could use to unscrew the door’s hinges. He didn’t care if he broke something. He needed to warn Alex. Immediately.

  Zack sat dead in the chair behind his desk. This was without a doubt the worst sight Alex had ever seen. Half his face was missing, and his remaining eye was wide open and seemed to look at her reproachfully. The blood running from his mouth had already congealed, and he held a gun in his left hand that hung down limply. Both the wall behind him and the light-colored carpet were splattered with blood.

  Alex’s knees were as soft as butter, and her stomach lurched. She had triggered a catastrophe by tipping off Ringwood. She had just wanted to pull one over on Zack, Levy, and Sergio, but now she was responsible for Zack’s death! Sure the deal was as good as sealed, he had bought Whithers stock. When he heard that the deal was off, it seemed he saw no way out besides suicide. Alex fought her rising panic, overcame her disgust and horror, and looked around his desk—which, to her surprise, had been cleared out. The glass tabletop, which was usually covered in yellow post-it notes, was spick-and-span. Zack hadn’t left a suicide note, and Alex noticed that the briefcase he always carried around with him was nowhere to be found.

  Then her gaze fell on the computer. There was a yellow light blinking, indicating that something was downloading. She forced herself not to look at the corpse, leaning over him to move the mouse. The computer started to rumble, and the cloudy sky desktop wallpaper appeared seconds later. Alex held her breath. A rotating E at the upper right corner of the screen indicated that there were unread e-mails on the server. She clicked on the icon to have a look.

  The computer showed four unread messages. She quickly opened the e-mails and read through them. One was from a broker in San Francisco, one from a lawyer’s office in Los Angeles, and two from travel agencies in New York. Alex printed all of the messages so that she could read them later. Then she checked his outbox and sent folders.

  “Bingo,” she murmured. Zack had written three e-mails tonight, but he only sent one of them. She opened the first e-mail, which was addressed to Ken Matsumo at the California Savings & Loan Bank in Los Angeles. Her eyes grew ever larger when she read what Zack had written.

  Hello Ken,

  I just wired the amount of $50 million to my account at your bank. Please transfer these funds first thing in the morning to account number A/CH/334677810 at Bankhaus Ruetli & Hartmann in Zurich, Switzerland. I must leave the city tonight.

  Thanks for your help.

  Zack

  “Unbelievable,” Alex whispered in amazement. That certainly didn’t sound like Zack had any plans of putting a bullet through his head. Did he suspect what Levy and Sergio were up to, and therefore embezzled fifty million dollars into his account at California Savings & Loan? He was certainly trying to make a run for it with this money. Clever boy! Sergio and Levy had clearly overestimated Zack’s loyalty.

  The second e-mail was in French, addressed to Cécile d’Aubray in Geneva.

  Cécile,

  This is our last night apart. We’ll leave for Geneva at midday tomorrow and we will be immensely rich.

  With love,

  ZStJ

  Zack wanted to leave the country and go to Geneva—with fifty million dollars in his luggage. Not too shabby. A third e-mail was addressed to a lawyer named John Sturgess in LA, asking him to forward a drafted document immediately to the US Attorney’s Office in New York, as discussed. Alex printed all the e-mails. Swissair had confirmed two flights for Mr. John Fallino and Ms. Cécile d’Aubray to Geneva, and there was also confirmation of an Air Canada flight to Vancouver for Zachary St. John.

  Zack’s third unread message was by far the most interesting. The lawyer, John Sturgess, had sent him a three-page document in which Zack confessed to all of the illegal deals that he administered on behalf of Levy and Vitali, including the dates and amounts of transfers. This document directly threatened those who wanted to sacrifice him.

  Alex slowly put two and two together and it all became clear as day. A chill ran down her spine when she realized what it meant. There was no way that Zack had committed suicide. Someone making such elaborate plans for his future wouldn’t put a .38 to his head and pull the trigger. Zack was planning to disappear in a few hours with fifty million dollars. Leaving behind a hundred million dollar debt and a ruined investment firm and wreaking havoc by sending his written confession to the US attorney.

  But someone had spoiled his plan—someone with no interest in the value of a human life. Alex didn’t doubt for a second that Sergio had gotten rid of this dangerous accomplice, disguising the act as a suicide. It was a clever ploy; it seemed quite reasonable that someone in Zack’s situation would prefer death over prison.

  Alex suddenly remembered that she was standing next to a dead body. With shaking hands, she collected the pages spewed out by the printer. On impulse, she deleted all the e-mails and emptied the trash. Her heart pounded frantically. If Sergio found out what she knew, she was
as dead as Zack.

  As Alex turned around, she knocked the swivel chair in which Zack’s corpse was dangling. The pages slipped out of her hands, and when she bent over to pick them up, her hand brushed against an object. She knelt down on the blood-splattered floor and grabbed a cell phone. She snuck it inside her jacket and left the office as quickly as possible. She’d nearly reached the fire door when she heard the elevator swoosh up. The red light next to the elevator door lit up. Someone was coming up! Alex looked around in utter panic and then opened the door to the ladies’ bathroom and slipped inside. Through a small crack in the door, she watched someone coming out of the elevator. She thought her heart would stop beating when she saw Sergio and Henry Monaghan.

  “The computer’s on,” Henry Monaghan observed.

  “My guys probably forgot to turn it off,” Sergio replied.

  “Yes, apparently they did. But the screen is turned on and the printer is still warm.” Monaghan shook his head. “It can’t be more than fifteen minutes since someone used it. Otherwise the screensaver would have come up or the computer would have switched into sleep mode.”

  With a stony expression, Sergio watched this stocky man with a bushy moustache move the mouse back and forth while staring grimly at the screen.

  “This someone has deleted all of the e-mails,” he announced after a while. “There’s nothing left.”

  A message on St. John’s answering machine explained why the two men would risk being surprised alongside Zack’s body at four in the morning. A lawyer by the name of John Sturgess had left a message saying that he’d recorded his statements and sent them to Zack’s office via e-mail. Maybe it was important, maybe not. The phone call from California had come in at ten thirty, right after Sergio had informed Zack that he and Alex were the new owners of MPM. Zack had died at around a quarter past eleven, and no one knew what he’d been doing in his office for these forty-five minutes. The word statements sounded dangerous to Monaghan, and Sergio completely agreed with him. Did Zack call the lawyer to tell him about the dilemma he was in? And now it seemed as if someone else had intercepted John Sturgess’s e-mail. Monaghan turned off the computer.