Exposure

by Alan Russell

  According to the latest information, no one had reported Pilgrim dead yet. Good. Maybe the ex-Stasi agent had been able to make him vanish without a trace.

  Blackwell looked at the screen again. Something was wrong. There had been credit card activity since the time the paparazzo had died. But what he had in front of him didn’t tell him enough. He started tapping at the keyboard, his fingers stabbing the keys. It took him two minutes of pounding and probing to get into the right area. Unblinking, he stared hard at the computer screen and tried to decipher what was in front of him. Maybe the German had decided to use the dead man’s credit cards. After all, the first charge was for a flight to Berlin. But the second charge wasn’t so easy to explain. Another flight had been booked, this one to New York City.

  Blackwell called up the flight’s manifest. The more he learned, the less he liked it. He looked at his watch. The ticket that had been charged on Pilgrim’s credit card was for a flight due to arrive at JFK in an hour.

  He stared at the screen, and thought hard about what it told him.

  Pilgrim was alive.

  Blackwell had to assume the worst, that Pilgrim had gone to Berlin, and then New York, for a reason. Jaeger’s roots were in Berlin, and Monroe worked in New York City. It was possible Pilgrim knew that. If that was the case, he had reversed field on them. Instead of being on the run, he was tracking them down.

  How much did he know?

  Blackwell couldn’t take any chances.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  In a few minutes Graham’s flight would be making its approach to New York’s JFK airport. He had been lucky so far. Against all odds, he had found the old photo of Hans Jaeger. After that, everything had fallen into place. The president of the fraternity’s Alte Herren, which was much like an alumni association, had given him the name of Karl Witt, who lived in Berlin. And Witt, over drinks and dinner, had told Graham how he had run into Jaeger in New York City.

  Witt had told him much more besides that, none of which made Graham feel any better. Even as a young man, Hans Jaeger had shown how determined he could be. When he set his mind on something, he accomplished the task.

  And the luck that had sustained him so far, Graham knew, had a way of quickly changing.

  Graham was worried about Lanie. Despite her assurances that no one knew about her getaway, Graham had his doubts. There was always a trail, and Jaeger struck him as a two-legged bloodhound. At first, her going into seclusion had seemed like a good thing. Now it felt wrong. And he couldn’t even call Lanie with his worries, at least not yet. There were no phones at her retreat. They had made arrangements to communicate, but those weren’t supposed to kick in until later that night.

  That was why he’d called Estelle Steinberg before his flight left from Berlin and awakened her.

  “Who the fuck is calling at this hour?”

  She had a way of getting right to the point. “You need to do something for Lanie,” Graham said.

  “You,” Estelle said. “I knew it was some major league asshole calling. I should have figured it was you.”

  “You need to hold a press conference tomorrow. It can’t be too early, though. I want it as late as possible, but not so late that it doesn’t generate stories for the news and radio shows on the West Coast.”

  “Would you like me to part the fucking Red Sea while I’m at it?”

  “Any miracle would be greatly appreciated,” Graham said. “We need one.”

  “The miracle is that I’m still listening to you.”

  The miracle continued long enough for Graham to explain what needed to be done.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FIVE

  Monroe paced around his office. Hearing from Blackwell did that to him.

  He didn’t like the news. All this time Blackwell had assured him that he was untouchable. Inviolable. And now he told him there was a possibility that their security had been breached and that he was a potential target. Pilgrim was not only alive, he was in New York City.

  Blackwell was downplaying the threat, of course. It wasn’t his ass that was on the line. It never was. To Blackwell, this was their “opportunity.” All Monroe had to do was be the lure. That wasn’t to his liking at all. He wanted to hunker down in his office, not go strolling around Manhattan. But he had to do it Blackwell’s way.

  It was true the man hadn’t led him wrong yet, but Monroe was still uncomfortable. Blackwell knew how to push his buttons, though. Once Pilgrim was dead, he said, they would be making the real money. Not millions, but billions. They would be privy to the insider information that would make them rich, not minor league rich, but robber baron rich. But before their dream could be realized, they needed to “take care of” their vexing problem.

  Blackwell’s euphemism for murder didn’t make his part in the scheme any easier for Monroe. He always tried to distance himself from that area of the business. Now he was expected to be the Judas goat. The blood would be on his hands. There would be no getting around that.

  He had no choice. Blackwell put his balls in a vise years ago, and had steadily ratcheted up the pressure. The spook had been following the Russian money and traced it to New World Financial. Monroe was desperate at the time. Bad hedge fund investments had turned his portfolios into mincemeat. To stay afloat, he acted on Russian mob overtures to “handle” their money. Subsequent deals with them proved easier. Monroe figured he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. When Blackwell came calling, he had Monroe dead to rights for laundering drug money, mob money. But instead of shutting him down and having him thrown into prison, Blackwell offered him a proposition. He needed a moneyman, a front for what he had in mind. Blackwell said he was privy to the kind of information that could make them rich.

  Time proved him right. Their enterprises, legitimate and illegitimate, were wildly profitable. With the green rolling in, it was easy for Monroe to turn a blind eye to any qualms he had.

  If only Blackwell had kept to the tried and true. Over the last two years his ambition had outweighed his senses. The easy pickings of Russia and Eastern Europe weren’t enough for him. He wanted a seat of power beyond what he called “their little pond.” Seduced by his vision, and dollar signs, Monroe went along with his scheme.

  There never really was a choice, he told himself. Almost thirty years ago Monroe had started as an assistant to a trader. He had taken on all the trader’s shit work, done his apprenticing, and learned. When he was given his chance to be a trader, Monroe ran with it. For years he put in hundred-hour workweeks and glad-handed enough to make Dale Carnegie puke. It didn’t stop at building up a clientele. Monroe became a fund manager, and then started his own business. New World Financial never took off like Monroe hoped, and when he was threatened with losing it all, with seeing all his sweat and work go forever south, he compromised.

  Compromised. Hell, he sold his soul to the devil.

  And now the devil was asking for payment in blood.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-SIX

  While in Berlin, Graham only had time to confirm that New World Financial was still an extant New York firm. Now he had time to call up information on his smart phone. At the moment he felt like a rider barely holding on to his mount, but his only option was to cling tightly a little longer. He was living the Chinese saying: “If you ride on the back of a tiger, you can never dismount.”

  New World Financial’s listing showed it was located on Lexington Avenue in the Turtle Bay section of town. Graham dialed its number. An automated answering system advised him that if he knew the extension of his party, he could dial it at any time. His other options included talking to an operator, or entering the first three letters of his party’s last name.

  Graham tapped in J-A-E.

  An atonal voice with no discernible accent came on the line. It was hard to tell if it was Jaeger or a computer-generated voice: �
��This is Hans Jaeger. I am away on business. Please leave a message.”

  Graham hung up and called New World Financial again. This time he went through the operator, asking to speak to Hans Jaeger.

  “I am sorry,” the operator said. “Mr. Jaeger is out of town on business.”

  “Do you have any idea when he will return?”

  “I don’t have that information,” the operator said. “Mr. Jaeger does check in for messages, however. If you would like, I’ll connect you to his voice mail.”

  “Please.”

  A moment later, Graham heard the start of Jaeger’s atonal message. There were a lot of things he would have liked to say to him, but he hung up instead.

  The building was a skyscraper sandwiched between other skyscrapers. Its lobby had six elevators, a concierge, and a security guard who used one eyeball to survey the foot traffic and the other to study several security monitors.

  Graham walked past the concierge and guard as if he knew what he was doing and where he was going. He hit the up button and had time to quickly scan the marquee. New World Financial was located on the fourteenth floor. Graham didn’t see any other businesses listed on that floor, so it was apparently not a small operation.

  He let a woman in a business suit precede him into the elevator. She pushed nine, and he reached out and pushed fourteen. As his hand came away from the button, he realized that he was really going up to the thirteenth floor. Not having a thirteenth floor accommodated the superstitious, but it accommodated the landlords even more. They charged more rent for the higher floor. That, more than anything else, had eliminated the thirteenth floor from most New York buildings.

  The ride up was silent and fast, speedy enough that Graham felt as if his stomach was going down while he was going up. Maybe it was his tension speaking more than the ascent. The woman exited on the ninth floor. Graham continued his ride on the tiger.

  When the door opened, Graham was faced with two hallways, both leading to a reception area. The company’s veneer was serene: large plants, big paintings, oversized floral arrangements, and expensive furniture. It offered its window to the world much like the front desk of a five-star hotel. Stately gold lettering that announced New World Financial was inlaid into the black marble reception area. The calm exterior belied what was going on behind the scenes. A man with a tie hurried through the hallway door, flinging it open on his way to the back. Graham caught a momentary glimpse behind the facade. Sitting in a long, rectangular room were mostly young, mostly male employees positioned in front of computer screens. They wore hands-free headsets that allowed them to punch in their trades while feverishly talking.

  Graham made a slow approach to the reception area, stopping to pick up several of New World’s brochures that extolled the virtues of investing with them.

  The receptionist, a young Latina wearing a name tag that said Marta, didn’t look like she had to handle phones or typing. Marta was there to greet. Most of her face appeared to be made up of large, milk-white teeth. Her smile should have been registered as a weapon. “May I help you?”

  “I was hoping to catch Hans in,” Graham said. “Hans Jaeger.”

  Marta didn’t need to consult a chart. “Mr. Jaeger is out of town on business.”

  Thank God, thought Graham. But he said, “He’s always out of town on business.”

  Marta laughed and nodded.

  “I wish I had his frequent flyer miles,” Graham said. “Where’s he this week?”

  “I am afraid I don’t know.”

  “And I suppose you don’t know when he will be back?”

  Marta shook her head. “As you said, Mr. Jaeger is often away.”

  Graham rolled his eyes and shook his head while stalling. He was fishing around, but he didn’t know for what.

  “Last time I saw him,” Graham said, “he had a very nice tan. You don’t get that kind of bronzing by working all the time. I asked him his secret, and he pretended not to understand. So I said, ‘Hans, give me copies of those pictures.’ And he said, ‘What pictures?’ And I said, ‘Those incriminating pictures of your boss. They must be doozies.’ ”

  Marta was doing her nodding and laughing again, albeit self-consciously. Her eyes shifted momentarily to a wall of photos, the corporate lineup that companies often put on display. Graham supposed it was business’s attempt to come off as extended family. In his experience, the more executive the position, the easier it was to picture that same face on a post office wall. He scanned the suits for Jaeger’s picture, and found not one, but two familiar faces.

  Jaeger was three rows down. But looking out from the top of the pack was a face he wasn’t expecting. For a long moment, Graham remembered being on the oil rig. The tranquilizer dart had been unpleasant, but nothing compared to the psychological torture he had been put through. Smith had made him relive the accident, had forced him to swallow the poison of his shame.

  Mr. Smith. On the oil rig, he had mentioned the name Adam. Adam Smith as in Wealth of Nations fame. Graham kicked himself for not picking up on the clue. There was a different name, of course, below the head shot. Mr. Smith was New World Financial’s CEO, Jefferson Monroe.

  Graham awakened to Marta’s talking to him. “. . . a message for him?”

  He turned away from the photo. From his anger. “No, that’s all right.”

  “Perhaps someone else could help you?”

  Graham was already backing away. “I will catch him another time.”

  After making another two calls to New World Financial, Graham was reasonably sure Jefferson Monroe was in. He had used different voices when calling for Monroe and been stonewalled each time by his secretary. In his gut, Graham knew he was up there. It would be just a matter of time before Monroe came down. There were two ways he could exit from the building, though, and short of planting himself in the lobby, Graham couldn’t cover both spots. He was also faced with the challenge of not standing out. At first glance, that didn’t seem a likely problem. There was no shortage of pedestrians on Lexington Avenue, and never a time when people weren’t milling about on the sidewalks. He could kill some time with vendors, pause over a hot dog or pretzel, but it was possible he would have to wait for hours.

  Graham flagged down a cab, got inside, and took a look at the driver’s license: Vlatr Rjdskvy. If Pat Sajak had been around, Graham might have tried buying the driver a vowel.

  “Pull over to the curb,” Graham instructed. “I’m waiting for someone. They might be a while.”

  “The meter have to run,” Vlatr said.

  Graham handed him a twenty. “I know.”

  Over the next hour, several more twenties passed between them. Vlatr didn’t seem to mind not driving. He also didn’t feel the need to spend the time talking. From behind a newspaper, Graham watched everyone coming and going from the building. His attention didn’t flag. He had time to think about Smith/Monroe’s nod, and the resulting tranquilizer dart. He remembered him hanging the Paris deaths over his head, and his being forced to gather dirt. He thought about Ran’s death, and his own near-death experience.

  At a little past one o’clock, Graham began to believe that Monroe had either left for lunch from the other door, or was eating in. Maybe the building even had a private elevator for the bigwigs. Graham considered reentering the building. He could try to sweet-talk Marta. Or maybe from the stairwell he could monitor anyone entering or leaving New World Financial. It was possible he could fake a delivery. Or he could just sit tight a little longer.

  Every minute that passed made the waiting that much harder. Time was getting short. He had already set the dominoes in motion and needed to get to Monroe before the afternoon was out. He needed to surprise him. Otherwise, a man like Monroe could insulate himself with a phalanx of lawyers that would make him all but untouchable.

  Graham scanned another group of emerging faces. They walked qui
ckly, immediately finding a place within the rhythm of passing feet. All except one.

  Jefferson Monroe paused at the doorway. He took a long breath, adjusted his tie, and seemed to consider which way to go. Instead of flagging a cab, Monroe started to walk. Graham threw Vlatr a tip that made his long wait worthwhile and jumped out of the car.

  Monroe walked up the block and turned west on Fifty-Seventh Street. Graham stayed about twenty feet behind him, always leaving at least half a dozen people between them. He didn’t want to make his move prematurely. In his pocket he had a Sharpie marker. Pressed up against Monroe’s back, it would have to pass for a knife or a gun. The threat of imminent danger stimulated the imagination. Slowly, Graham closed the gap between them.

  Jefferson Monroe tried to loosen up. He wanted to look casual, wanted to appear as if he were just strolling to a luncheon destination, but everything felt unnatural. It was easy to smile for the camera, but this was the opposite. He had to pretend the camera wasn’t there, pretend an insouciance he didn’t feel. Being so exposed was putting his nerves on edge. It was like knowing a balloon was being overinflated, and having to wait for the resulting explosion. You know the pop is going to happen, but not when.

  Blackwell’s plan was not to his liking. The way he had set things up, Monroe needed running shoes, for God’s sake. It was five blocks to the restaurant, all the way to 150 West Fifty-Seventh. And then afterward, he would have to trek another two blocks to Central Park. Apparently, Blackwell wasn’t prepared to act until then. Monroe was glad he didn’t know the details.

  Given his choice, Monroe would have picked another restaurant, but Blackwell loved the Russian Tea Room. He had made his acquaintance with it on the job; the Russian mob often dined there. Monroe imagined how Blackwell had watched the mobsters stuff caviar into their mouths. It had evidently been enough to make him think.