Gregory spoke at a hundred miles an hour, and he thought twice as fast which meant he sometimes fell over himself, not often, mind you; just occasionally.
Isabel adored him, but he made Ed cringe. To him, Gregory was a bald, pain-in-the-butt motor-mouth who, when he was a kid playing hide-and-seek would probably have been the one the other kids wouldn’t even bother looking for. Plus Ed couldn’t stand the guy’s voice. It wasn’t that Ed didn’t like Aussies. He’d fought beside many of them, and they were top troops, right up with the best. But Gregory’s stream of consciousness wrapped inside his nasal whine exhausted Ed. “Julia Gillard on speed but with better hair” was how one news clip had described Gregory’s voice. Despite Isabel backing Gregory as being brilliant, Ed just didn’t see it.
“I told you we had to watch out for this,” Gregory truthfully reminded Isabel. “And when we least need it, just when we’ve got Muslim America back in our tent eating olives out of our hands, that twisted…,” he paused when he saw her scowl, “… creep spits the damn seeds right in our face.”
“Enough!” Isabel said, charitably assuming the pressure had gotten to him. “Our campaign doesn’t talk or think like that!”
She didn’t talk like that, but Gregory knew from his polling that 30 percent of Americans did; he took a slurp of Diet Coke to stop himself from telling her that. This time, his mouth had really got ahead of his mind.
KARIM Ahmed was one of Isabel’s many success stories or more accurately, he had been. His father, Hakim, an Iraqi chemical engineer, had fled with his family as refugees to America after the first Gulf War. Hakim started out mopping floors in a Newark outlet of Isabel’s BBB restaurant chain; coincidentally the city where Isabel had been born. Despite being a practising Muslim, Karim’s father always hand-painted Isabel a Christmas card incorporating both traditional geometric elements and Christian icons—he was a fine artist who believed his new life exemplified how different cultures could cohabit contentedly. Every year his card offered his and his wife Najeeba’s thanks for the opportunities Isabel had provided for their family. By the time their son Karim was graduating high school, Hakim had risen to become manager of the LaGuardia airport BBB, one of the chain’s busiest and most profitable. Karim was a straight-A student, blitzing his final examinations and topping his class. He’d done well in his SATs and was desperate to take the undergraduate course at NYU’s Stern Business School but he’d narrowly missed a scholarship and the fees were a killer.
Isabel had gone to LaGuardia to take the shuttle to Boston and, as she often did, wandered over to visit the BBB restaurant, one of the hundreds she already owned at that time.
“Hakim, why doesn’t Karim apply for a BBB family scholarship?” she asked.
“There is such a scheme?” he asked.
There was, from that moment on, and Karim got to go to NYU.
To the Ahmed family’s surprise, Isabel turned up at Karim’s graduation, a tradition she maintained for all employees and their kids until she was elected to Congress and had to step away from the business.
“What’s that?” Karim asked, looking at the envelope Isabel had just popped into the black mortarboard cap he was holding upside-down, like a dish.
“Murray’s finally bought that ranch, Karim, and he’s aiming to retire in a few years. He needs a number two.”
He didn’t need to be the whiz that he was to know that she was offering him a job as assistant to BBB’s Chief Financial Officer, Murray Byron. Karim nodded, unable to speak. He knew about the CFO’s long-talked-about retirement plans—part of his scholarship had involved him interning with Murray during university vacations—but this!
“Eventually, Murray’s gonna head back to Texas to raise cattle, so BBB needs to start developing someone to jump into his saddle. Any ideas, Karim?”
Hakim and Najeeba looked at each other in disbelief. “We love America,” said Najeeba, her smile broader than the Tigris. “And we love you, Isabel.”
Hakim hugged her, “You are like a sister to us.”
KARIM became one of Isabel’s hand-picked business intimates and slid easily and naturally into Murray’s CFO role two years before BBB was sold into an Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange. By then, she’d left the board and distanced herself from the business as part of her campaign to get elected to Congress. Even so, Karim’s betrayal had come as a shock to her.
Spencer Prentice, too, had been aghast. Though now a congressman himself, but on the opposite side of the aisle, he had long been Isabel’s confidante and during the IPO process had been investment banker to the deal. Having observed Karim at very close quarters he was impressed. At due diligence meetings, Spencer cross-examined the young CFO on everything: the budget items and expenses that concerned him, teasing out how reliable the revenue forecasts were, understanding what could go wrong with the business’s profit levers, querying the veracity of the internal systems. Everything. Even in the face of sustained probing, Karim hadn’t missed a beat.
“The best CFO I’ve seen in years,” Spencer had told investors and analysts.
So it was especially awkward when, only two months after BBB listed on the exchange, one of the audit juniors unearthed the fraud. He’d been up late ahead of the release of BBB’s first quarterly financial report and from the moment he tripped over the first tiny irregularity to Karim taking flight, it was only a few hours. Karim had misappropriated over four million dollars.
Market confidence in BBB Inc. was punctured the moment the chairman simultaneously announced the fraud and Karim Ahmed’s disappearance. The stock price haemorrhaged. BBB had been sold into the IPO at $30 per share. In those first two months of public trading, despite weak markets, the stock had still spiked up a solid 20 percent to $36, so the sudden plunge to $20 had seriously hurt.
Investors, the media, as well as Isabel’s opponents wanted a scapegoat. Fingers pointed in every direction, many at her. The headlines and newsbars were already clattering: Fraud smashes BBB but Burger Queen rolls in dough, and worse.
As soon as she’d heard the news, Isabel got put through to BBB’s chairman who was in the middle of a crisis board meeting. Spencer was with him, and they both left the boardroom to take her call.
“Isabel,” said Spencer with more than a hint of anxiety, “This isn’t your concern. You don’t need to do this.” She had offered an ex gratia payment, a gift to the company of the entire sum Ahmed had defrauded. Four million dollars.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she told the two of them. “The investors who bought in at the IPO saw BBB as my company…”
“But you haven’t been involved for…”
“Whatever. They saw Karim as my man. They see this as my problem. Even if you don’t, I do. You’re telling me that Karim was doing this for years, so it started on my watch.”
The chairman smiled into the speakerphone. “It’s over-generous but you’re probably right. And it’ll certainly go a long way to relieving the board in the other room.”
“Not the whole way?”
“The market will still be worrying whether there’s more bad news to come.”
“Same deal. If there’s anything I should’ve known, I’m good for that too.”
There was more bad news, but when it broke Isabel could do little about it. The Islamic charity in Chicago that Karim had been syphoning off the funds to was a front for a terrorist enclave.
Even though no one could seriously put that at Isabel’s feet, it would continue to haunt her campaign.
13
IT TOOK OVER two years for authorities to capture Karim Ahmed and months after that for his trial to start, by this time smack in the middle of Isabel’s tilt for the presidency. Each day of court proceedings aimed new shots at her campaign, but they were only flesh wounds so far, despite Bobby Foster’s team blowing up every micro-development into a blunderbuss attack. Then one morning it stopped. The judge threw the case out on a technicality—evidence illegally obtained—
and neither side of politics was happy.
The Republican presidential campaign was rocked today by a shock decision by Judge William Thomas to terminate the trial of Karim Ahmed, candidate Isabel Diaz’s former protégé… The disgraced chief financial officer of BBB Inc., the burger chain once owned by Ms Diaz, always protested his innocence and has now walked free.
Ahmed had been charged with thirteen counts of financing terrorist groups on United States’ soil, as well as eight counts of corporate fraud.
While Ahmed’s defence lawyer claims it is a victory for American justice, Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Foster rejects that. From his campaign bus in Wisconsin today, Mr Foster said:
Isabel Diaz’s friend and confidant has walked, but not because he is innocent. That these grave charges were tossed out on a technicality leaves the American people troubled, with unanswered questions about Isabel Diaz’s judgment and her fitness to hold office.
Only five months ago federal agencies ended Ahmed’s two years on the run. Authorities had been on the lookout for the Iraqi immigrant after Ms Diaz’s restaurant chain revealed a multi-million-dollar fraud three years ago, only weeks after she sold the entire firm to investors for upwards of $250 million, some of which is funding her current presidential campaign as well as her nationwide Triple-B charitable foundation. The original discovery of the fraud sparked an investigation that extended into six states and has so far resulted in eight arrests.
We cross now to…
ED Loane walked into Isabel’s mid-town Manhattan campaign headquarters, not far from his own office. Isabel and Gregory were hunched over a sheet of paper covered in scrawled boxes and arrows, the latest adjustments to the campaign strategy, Ed presumed.
“I just heard… Ahmed’s off the hook. Damn lawyers!” he grunted, glowering at Gregory, knowing he had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard Law School after an undergraduate politics degree in Australia. “The bullcrap streaming out of Foster’s mouth… And what about the freakin’ judge! That conniving Democrat bastard chose his timing brilliantly, didn’t he? To inflict maximum damage on you... Here’s how it’ll go: ‘Ahmed’s free to walk the streets, but he’s not innocent… a threat to all Americans.’ And he’s your man, Isabel. End of story. Damn it.”
“That’s extreme,” Isabel said. “Judge Thomas doesn’t go for my politics but he’s not going to endanger the country for that. Besides, while I accept Karim stole the money, I can’t believe he knew the charity was a terrorist front.”
“Don’t ever defend that shit publicly,” said Ed, walking to the window.
Gregory was about to give his opinion when Ed’s head snapped round and the ice of his glare froze Gregory’s tongue. Instead, he straightened his tie, a Versace, and let Ed continue.
“Ahmed has to go down for this before the election, or we’re finished,” said Ed. “I’m telling you this thing will fester, and it will screw your campaign. Trust me. None of those fancy arrows on that stupid sheet of paper will change that.”
A silence jagged the air for almost a minute, a staggering time for someone like Gregory for whom speech and thought were almost indistinguishable.
14
SIMON KNEW THAT his girlfriend Elia despised Mike Mandrake. It wasn’t merely that the journalist was a sharp-elbowed loudmouth from Washington DC, there was something else. Simon tried pressing the issue but Elia clammed up as she usually did about her work. “It’s confidential”… “If I told you, I’d have to kill you, ha ha”… They were all excuses, not reasons. Whatever was behind it, Elia was continually pissed off about something and it was bugging their relationship.
“It’s just him, okay?” she said, trying to push Simon off. “He’s an egotistical bully and a repulsive shit, and… and he’s got no background in TV, but then… you know, this is the thing… he’s cracked something no one’s managed to crack before. So I loathe the guy… seriously, but his work... it’s…”
“This work. Is it worth the crap he’s dumping over you?”
Elia’s eyebrows rose like someone poised at the top of a cliff debating whether to jump.
Simon waited.
“It’s about Isabel Diaz’s past,” she said.
“You already told me that.” He stood and stretched his lanky frame. “Beer?”
She nodded.
He sidled over to the fridge. Take it slowly. That’s what one of the fridge magnets said. He knew it was Elia’s joke to remind him to fix the loose shelf inside, but right now he took it as a warning for this conversation. He noticed her fingers were fretting her bottom lip. “What is it, then?” He couldn’t help himself. “Is he linking her to Ahmed’s terrorists? Is that it? Jesus, Elia. How could you?”
Like many of the former runaways Isabel’s charity had given a hand to, Simon was very protective of his benefactor. He didn’t know her personally, not really; they’d only met a few times, but her Triple-B foundation had changed his life. At sixteen, he was doing drugs and living on the streets. It was his arrest for busting a convenience store that tripped him up. The duty lawyer hooked him up with a Triple-B guy in court that day for someone else, and who convinced the judge not to send him to juvy if he signed up for their vocational training program. It was hardly a choice, and he had begrudged it at the time. But it gave him the chance to pick up on plumbing and these days Simon’s ample chest puffed proudly at being a solid citizen who made a difference to people’s lives. He fixed their pipes. It was far better than living in them.
“It’s a human interest thing.” Elia was biting her lip now.
“So what’s turning you inside-out?”
She glanced back over her shoulder, and shook her head as if realising the stupidity of the action. “We’ve tracked down who Isabel’s father really was.”
Simon handed Elia her beer and carried his over to the TV. “What? Was he a Bolivian drug lord or something? That it?” He kept looking at the screen, feigning the right level of disinterest to keep Elia going.
She cleared her throat. “Ah… here’s the thing… he wasn’t actually Bolivian.”
“Huh?” He turned back so quickly he spilt his beer on the rug.
Isabel’s father was Bolivian. A businessman. Everyone who’d been through Triple-B knew that. The story was famous.
“He was Chilean,” said Elia, the sweat beading her upper lip. Normally, she’d never reveal a work secret.
“That’s it? That’s the big deal? That he’s Chilean? Who the fuck cares…they’re all Latinos, right?” he joked. Though he was sure the detail was important, he didn’t understand why.
“Shit, Simon,” she said. “Madeleine Albright … remember her? Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State? I don’t think she just toasted ‘mazeltov’ when she was leading the Middle East peace talks and she suddenly discovered her parents had been Czech Jews, not the Catholics she’d always believed.”
“Albright, shmalbright.”
“If you’d spent your whole life believing that your dad, who you’d never met, was a Bolivian businessman but, live on national TV, you get ambushed and get told for the first time that he was actually a high-ranking Chilean diplomat, don’t you think it might matter to you?”
Simon ignored her glare and joined her on the sofa. ‘He is dead, right? He’s not gonna turn up on your show like it’s This Is Your Life or something?”
“He’s definitely dead,” Elia said, pushing back a bang of her black hair that had escaped her elastic. “He died a month after Isabel was born.”
“After?”
“Apparently.”
“You think you should tell her this live?”
“My opinion isn’t worth shit. It’s Mandrake who wants to spring it on her, in front of millions. And the bastard’s got something else… he won’t tell me what it is… but he says it’s huge, and he’s dangling it out there like…”
“I hope the fucker chokes on himself.”
15
LITTLE DAVEY LOANE was definitely his dead
mother’s son, and Ed was sick of people tactlessly reminding him of it. Davey’s thick blond hair flopped just like Jane’s used to and his open blue eyes lit up with her same buoyant optimism. But adore his son as he did, it meant occasionally… in a certain light… if Davey walked or ran in a particular way… his mere presence could reignite Ed’s rage. Fury at the infidelity that led to Jane’s death, and contempt for the man who caused it, often refuelled the suspicion that perhaps Davey was not his son at all. He’d thought about tests, but he didn’t really want to know.
This Saturday morning, Isabel was at home for a rare lazy family breakfast. The house was way over the top for Isabel, but Ed loved it, more for its memories than anything else, so she had forced aside her discomfort over it. The six-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion had been described in the realtor’s ad Ed saw when Davey was born as “renowned and admired for over eighty years as one of the most important houses in the Hamptons, Long Island. It took the eminent Manhattan firm of Polhemus & Coffin seven years to build the home, which is listed at over 7,000 square feet and located on eight acres overlooking Shinnecock Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.” Why three people plus help needed so much space was not something Isabel could answer. Not even Ed liked entertaining or throwing big parties, but he did fish, so at least it had that going for it. And it was private.
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