by Nele Neuhaus
“Where did the money go?” Sergio asked after recovering from the initial shock.
“To an account at California S&L in Beverley Hills, Los Angeles.”
“Who entered the transaction? Zack was already dead last night!”
“The request appeared on the computer this morning. It was approved at 8:31, originating from my computer. Everything was handled properly, and the password was correct. The responsible account manager compared the name of the person making the request with the account holder and approved it.”
“From your computer?” Sergio was stunned and let himself sink into a chair. “That means that Alex was in this office an hour ago and sat calmly at your desk while hundreds of people were looking for her!”
“Fifty million dollars,” Levy whispered, “and we can’t even announce it publicly!”
Sergio stared blankly at the wall. Alex was even more audacious than he could have imagined. While they were searching for her in the building, she had stolen fifty million dollars from him outright. “I’m going to kill her,” he growled. The thought that she had fooled him again tore him up inside. He—Sergio Vitali, who was so smart and cunning that his profitable businesses had operated unimpeded for decades—had been double-crossed by this bitch! Sergio briefly contemplated calling Nelson, but then he dismissed the idea. He grabbed Levy’s telephone.
“What are you going to do?” Levy was nothing more than a frightened bundle of nerves.
“I’ll finish her off.” A cruel smile swirled around Sergio’s lips. “She and her accomplices. Every cop in this country is chasing her now. She’s going to pay for what she did to me.”
He dialed a number that he knew by heart.
“This is Sergio Vitali speaking,” he said when someone answered. “Please put me through to Mr. Harding.”
Alex watched the news at a small joint in Chinatown. The police were looking for her because of Zack’s murder. It was pointless to go to an airport because the risk of getting stopped was too great. She left the restaurant and walked in the rain to Canal Street, where she hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the cab driver asked.
“Port Authority,” Alex replied. Neither Sergio nor the police would check all the buses that left the city. On her way to Forty-Second Street, she managed to calm herself down some. She had escaped Sergio’s men by a whisker, but she certainly wouldn’t be so lucky again. These men were dead serious. Things had been snapping quickly into place over the past forty-eight hours, and she had triggered it all. Alex leaned her forehead against the taxi’s window. Would she have blown the Whithers deal if she had known what would happen? Zack was dead—murdered by the same men who were after her now. She shuddered when she realized that her life as she knew it was over. The thought that she was on the run, without a clue as to how and when it might end, was so frightening that she wanted to cry.
Oliver had been waiting for a phone call from Alex or Mark for three hours. He could hardly stand sitting in his apartment any longer, condemned to idleness and watching TV as it broadcast incredible cock-and-bull stories about Alex and St. John. Where was Alex? Why didn’t she contact him?
The buzz of the doorbell tore him from his thoughts. But instead of Alex, two police officers with weapons drawn and two plainclothesmen were standing in the doorway. His first reflex was to slam the door shut, but the men were already in his apartment. They brutally pushed his face against the wall and twisted his arms behind his back.
“Are you Oliver Skerritt?” one of the men asked.
“Yes,” Oliver said, wheezing in pain, “what do you want from me?”
“NYPD.” The first man presented his badge while the other searched him for weapons. “We just want to ask you some questions. Please come with us.”
“Do you have an arrest warrant?” Oliver’s heart was pounding.
“We just want to ask you a few questions.”
“About what?”
“About Alex Sontheim.”
“And what exactly would you like to know?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Come on, let’s go.”
They dragged him from his apartment, and Oliver saw the flabbergasted faces of the couple living below him as the police escorted him downstairs. His fear that Sergio Vitali must be behind this arrest grew inside of him.
As Alex waited for the departure of her Greyhound to Boston, she remembered the cell phone she had found under Zack’s desk and took it out of the pocket of her wet down jacket. It was set on silent, but still turned on. She dialed Mark’s extension, but he didn’t answer. Then she tried to reach Oliver. He also didn’t pick up the phone. Determined, she called the operator to connect her with city hall. It took a while to get through to the mayor, but at last she had Nick on the line.
“Alex!” Nick’s voice sounded tense. “Where are you?”
Alex closed her eyes with a sense of relief. The bus would leave in ten minutes.
“I don’t have much time,” she said quickly. “Please, listen to me! Nothing they claim on TV is true!”
“Alex—”
“No, please listen,” she cut him off. “An important deal went sour yesterday. St. John bought a hundred million dollars’ worth of shares for MPM whose value was cut in half overnight. Do you remember that partnership called SeaStarFriends that I told you about?”
“Yes.”
“This partnership was originally founded by Levy and Vitali to operate an investment firm called MPM. But since last night, St. John and I are listed as the sole owners. They wanted to blame the whole disaster on us and be done with it.”
“Hold on! I don’t quite understand—”
“Because of St. John, MPM is sitting on a huge pile of unsellable shares. The firm will file for bankruptcy today for failure to meet net capital requirements. Vitali and Levy obviously didn’t want to risk exposing their involvement with this dirty business, which is why they made St. John and me the owners. Zack probably found out and fought against it. That’s why he was killed.”
“Alex,” Nick said emphatically, “they say that you killed him. The police and the FBI are after you. Can’t you come here?”
“I’ve tried.” Alex looked around, but no one in the Port Authority waiting area seemed to take any interest in a woman wearing a baseball hat. “I ran into Sergio’s men at city hall and barely managed to escape. Nick, these guys want to kill me because I’ve discovered things that’ll surely put Sergio behind bars. I haven’t killed anyone. I went to St. John’s office last night because I wanted to talk to him about everything, and then I found his dead body.”
“Alex, for heaven’s sake. Tell me where you are. I’ll send someone over right away.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do that. I don’t trust anyone anymore. There are too many people on Sergio’s side.”
“Then I’ll come myself.”
“Vitali is scouring the city for me. Nick, you must use the information that I’ve given you before Levy and Vitali manage to cover their tracks! Please!”
“Alex, let me come to you!”
“No. I’ll skip town for a while, but I’ll contact you again as soon as I can.”
There was a click on the line, and the call ended. Nick stared at the receiver in his hand and slowly put it down. Her voice sounded desperate, but the things she told him sounded plausible. It wouldn’t be the first time Vitali got rid of an inconvenient accomplice. And now he tried to blame the murder on Alex to discredit her. US Attorney John de Lancie appeared on TV. The reporter asked what kind of evidence the US Attorney’s Office had to prove that Alex Sontheim committed the murder of Zachary St. John.
“Ms. Sontheim was in Mr. St. John’s office,” de Lancie said in a serious tone. With perfectly parted hair and steel-framed glasses, he seemed authoritative and determined. “We checked the surveillance tapes numerous times, and there is no doubt that just Ms. Sontheim entered the office after St. John. He was killed by a shot to the head fr
om a close distance. St. John held the weapon in his hand, which indicates that the crime was intended to be disguised as a suicide. Further evidence shows that Ms. Sontheim’s fingerprints were all over the desk, the computer’s keyboard, and the mouse. As we have learned in the meantime, she used her victim’s computer to transfer a large sum of money from a company account to her personal account. We assume that she planned to flee the country with the money after she learned that the front organization she had used in her large-scale illegal insider trading scheme was doomed to bankruptcy. In all likelihood, a fight erupted, during which she shot her accomplice in order to seize all of the remaining money for herself.”
“Where’s Ms. Sontheim at the moment?” a reporter asked.
“We don’t know. She’s still on the run. But since we issued a federal warrant for her arrest for the murder of Zachary St. John, she’s not only wanted by the police but also the FBI and the US Marshals Service. I’m optimistic that we will capture her by the end of the day.”
Nick stared at his successor’s face. The alleged evidence against Alex was overwhelming: fingerprints, surveillance tapes, and now also embezzlement! And on top of it, she was a fugitive. If she were innocent, she could turn herself in to the police—at least an outside observer would believe. Nick wished that he could trust Alex, but he started to doubt her innocence. He realized he hardly knew her, and he wondered if his past sympathy for her may have influenced his objectivity. Maybe Alex hadn’t accessed those bank statements by accident after all. It was certainly possible that she was not only in league with St. John, but maybe even with Vitali himself—until she had fallen out of favor with them.
Suspicion arose inside Nick, and he started to feel sick. Did Alex possibly just call on him to uncover the alleged bribery scandal to distract from her crime? How could he know whether these bank statements were real? It wasn’t difficult for a banker to falsify such statements. Nick felt miserable. What if Alex had planned all of this long ago? It was conceivable that she had just visited him at the cemetery that Sunday to trick him into trusting her. Maybe she got into a lover’s quarrel with Vitali and conjured up this perfidious plan to put one over on him. Who would make a more suitable ally than Nick Kostidis? But Alex’s compassion and her fear of Vitali had seemed so genuine. He had believed her unconditionally.
“It almost seems this lady has led us by the nose,” Frank said, voicing Nick’s fears.
“I refuse to believe that,” he said quietly. He remembered how she’d snuggled against his arm when they met on that evening in Tribeca. He was proud of his ability to read people. But suddenly he remembered Raymond Howard. He had let himself be deceived before. Could he have really deluded himself so tragically a second time?
“She asked me to use the information that she gave us immediately,” Nick said.
“That would put an end to the headlines about this guy’s murder for a while,” Frank said, nodding. “In the meantime, she can bolt undisturbed.”
Nick stared silently into space.
“That’s a clever plan,” Frank said. “I believed everything she said. She’s a great actress.”
“I have a feeling that this is yet another cover-up,” Nick countered. “Just like that anthrax thing.”
“Possibly,” Frank replied skeptically, “but the question remains who wants to cover what up? It seems to me that Sontheim is trying to use this bribery scandal as a distraction from her dirty dealings.”
“Please leave me alone for a moment,” Nick asked. “I need to think about this. Tell Allie not to put any calls through, except…”
“Yes?”
“Except if it’s Alex Sontheim.”
“Nick! You’re making a huge mistake! This woman is wanted for murder!”
“Frank, please!”
Frank Cohen threw his boss a doubtful look and left the office. Nick closed his eyes. He was bitterly disappointed. He would never trust a person in his life again if Alex had really deceived him so badly. He owed his life to her. Now she had asked him for help, and he was too much of a coward to act, too afraid to make a mistake. He had never been hesitant or timid in the past—back in the old days, before Vitali had succeeded in destroying him. Nick sighed in agony, wishing that he had someone to ask for advice. As a politician, he needed to be reelected every four years. Handing over dubious evidence could risk his reputation. His intuition told him that they were real, but what if they weren’t? He turned on the television. He had never let himself be influenced by what other people thought before. If any decision he made was highly unpopular, then he would make it quickly to get it over with. Why didn’t he just do what Alex had asked him to do? Did he really care about reelection? Sergio Vitali—who had humiliated and mocked him for years—had already taken everything he loved and cherished. He had nothing to lose.
Police Commissioner Harding appeared on the TV screen, and Nick turned up the volume. They were still talking about the murder. Harding spoke with exaggerated pathos, as if Alex had shot the president himself. And it was this minor detail that caught Nick’s attention. This St. John character was just one of thousands of investment bankers on Wall Street. His death was certainly tragic, but did this really constitute a threat to national security requiring the involvement of the FBI? A murder case wasn’t the responsibility of New York City’s police commissioner but that of the homicide department. Nick had a feeling that his intuition was right. This whole thing was fishy. It was downright strange to make such a mountain out of a molehill. Did the involvement of both Harding and de Lancie, and the media hype around the murder of a relatively unknown investment banker, actually indicate that Vitali was involved? If that was the case, then Alex was right. The more Nick thought about it, the more plausible her admittedly wild story seemed. Assuming that they were real, the documents that she had given him were explosive. Vitali was certainly also aware of that.
“Blood-covered gloves were found in a trash can,” Harding said, “and the crime scene unit believes that the suspect wore these gloves when she committed the murder of her former accomplice.”
Gloves? Nick hesitated. De Lancie had just said that her fingerprints were clear proof of her guilt. Nick made his decision that very second. He could never look at himself in the mirror again if something happened to Alex because of his cowardice. His idle time was over. He would find out soon enough whether his decision was right or wrong. But doing nothing would only help Vitali.
“The confirmation arrived,” Justin Savier said, turning toward Alex. “Fifty million dollars has been credited to your account at Bank of America.”
Alex exhaled with a deep sigh and clenched her fists. It was three thirty, and she was wide awake and dead tired at the same time. She glanced at the muted TV. The manhunt for her in connection with Zack’s murder was the top story on all the channels. She could hardly believe what was happening to her.
“Thanks, Justin,” she said. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you for all this.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Justin smiled. For him it was all an exciting game. “What’s next?”
“The money is wired to a numbered account at Gérard Frères in Zurich,” Alex replied, “and then it’ll vanish.”
Justin nodded.
“By the way, that hair color looks really good on you.” He grinned. Alex smiled in fatigue. She’d dyed her hair darker and wore blue contact lenses. Justin had taken pictures of her two hours ago and e-mailed them to an acquaintance. Her new American passport in the name of Emily Chambers would be ready an hour later. Justin’s shady acquaintance had asked for a thousand dollars, which felt like nothing considering the passport could get her out of the country unscathed. The Swissair flight to Zurich Justin booked under this false name was scheduled to depart at ten o’clock. If everything went smoothly, she would be in Switzerland seven hours later, where Gerhard Etzbach—a fellow Stanford alumnus—would be waiting for her. He hadn’t hesitated for a second when she called him and asked for hel
p. Ten minutes later, he’d called her back to give her the details for the account he had opened in her name.
“I’m worried about Mark and Oliver.” She couldn’t bear sitting still despite her fatigue, so she paced back and forth through Justin’s apartment. “I can only hope that Kostidis takes action.”
“If we don’t hear from him by nine, I’ll fly straight to New York to see Kostidis,” Justin offered. “I’ll convince him that everything you told him is true. Then he’s got no choice but to act.”
“I hope it won’t be too late by then.” Alex couldn’t fend off these dark premonitions. She had a feeling that the worst was yet to come.
It was ten thirty when Lloyd Connors—the deputy US attorney for the Southern District of New York—entered the mayor’s office.
“What kind of crazy story is this, Nick?” he asked. “I hope that this really is important, because my wife was pretty mad when I told her that I had to leave the house again.”
“Thank you for coming right away.” Nick extended his hand to the younger man. They sat down at the table in his office. Connors had started at the US Attorney’s Office straight out of law school when Nick was still the head of the agency. He had perseverance and was clever and ambitious. Nick wasn’t one bit surprised that he had climbed the career ladder so quickly.
“You said on the telephone that de Lancie must not hear about this meeting. That had me wondering. So what’s this all about?” Connors crossed his legs and watched Nick closely with a friendly smile. His adversaries had frequently underestimated him because he looked so harmless, but an alert intelligence lurked behind his boyish face.
“It’s a complicated matter and highly explosive,” Nick started out. “I finally got my hands on evidence against Vitali.”