Trojan Horse

by David Lender

  “Well that sure fell into my lap,” Kovarik said aloud after Habib left. Add the retainer to the three client retainers he’d already signed up and he had Kovarik & Co.’s first year’s expenses covered. Any other fees, including the 4 million from their mutual client, whoever the hell he was, would be profit.

  But what these guys were up to was scary. He had a moment in the middle of the discussion with this guy, Kapur, or whatever his real name was, when he started wondering, was he Arab, Afghan, Pakistani? Could his client be some fundamentalist nut or terrorist? No way he’d go there. He’d make sure all future meetings with Kapur were in person, hard copy of documents only, with no email paper trail. He’d insist the entity he’d sign up in the engagement letter would be clean. And no wire transfers of fees; checks from U.S. banks only. He didn’t want any shit from this sticking to him.

  And the way the guy assured him the definition of success was no problem, well, he didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to put two and two together there. Once his new client had worked his magic, things in the oil and gas business would either slow down, stop working, or more likely just blow up. It reminded Kovarik of that drilling rig that exploded and sank in the Gulf years back. The well had spewed oil for months, screwed up fishing, beaches, marshes. What a cleanup bill, what a fortune some of his clients made on it. And it got Kovarik a lot of business, too, financing those clients, merging a couple of them. Imagine that on a scale 50, maybe 100 times bigger. Financings on new equipment and plants: drilling rigs, refineries, offshore platforms, pipelines. Bankruptcies, workouts, mergers. Every banker in the oil and gas business would pound it for fees for a decade.

  Yeah, that sure fell into my lap. And whether Kapur knew it or not, he was only asking a couple of weeks’ work; putting together a comprehensive overview of all the bankers in oil and gas, all their software systems clients, and all their customers. A third of it he could do off the top of his head, the rest with his Analysts grinding out the midnight hours.

  He started thinking it through. Daniel Youngblood, of course, would be at the top of the list with the most clients. Just thinking about him made Kovarik’s pulse quicken, his jaw tense. Man, how he hated that guy. And how much he enjoyed the beginning of summer, breaking Daniel’s balls over that Dorchester deal. He’d whipped his own client into a frenzy: yes, no, maybe; yes, no, maybe. Back and forth, dragging the deal out for weeks just to wear Daniel down, drive him crazy. He even succeeded in stretching the closing out until past the end of Daniel’s firm’s fiscal year. He bet that gave the sonofabitch a fun year-end bonus negotiation with his CEO.

  He hadn’t done a deal across from Daniel in 18 months, so it was especially fun. Not as much fun as sabotaging Daniel for partner at Goldman—the stupid, holier-than-thou, smarmy Mister Nice Guy Team Player had too big an ego to even think Kovarik could be screwing him behind the scenes. Hell, they were pals, right? Pals going back to B-school, pals starting out together at Goldman. Yeah, pals like when Daniel stole Angie from him.

  Angie, his girl, the best lay he ever had, and her father rich as Croesus; man he’d have been set. Dating her a year before business school, then two years of working the long distance relationship thing from Harvard, and then she disappears to the West Coast. By the time she comes back both he and Daniel are Vice Presidents at Goldman, she takes one look at him and that’s it. Daniel twists her mind; she’s all his.

  Up until then all Angie knew was that Kovarik lived in Beacon Hill before he came to New York. Never knew he’d grown up in South Boston, threw off that low-class Southie accent, until after she met Daniel. It must have been he who told her. Well, no matter now. Daniel had gone and let her get sick and die in that crazy Peru trip; now he’d never get her back anyhow.

  Christ, how he hated that sonofabitch. And maybe now, with Daniel’s name at the top of the list he’ll be giving these wackos, who knew? Maybe the shit Kovarik didn’t want sticking to him would stick to Daniel. Maybe, if he could work it right.

  CHAPTER 4

  JULY 4, THIS YEAR. MILFORD, Pennsylvania. Gary and Jonathan’s home, the site of the Fourth of July party, was on an isthmus in the Sawkill Creek not more than a mile from Daniel’s weekend house but seemed in another constellation.

  “Hey, sailor,” Sammy said, when Daniel entered. The theme that year was Gilbert and Sullivan. Sammy’s outfit proclaimed him the Ruler of the Queen’s Navy: ruffles on his shirt, velvet coat bedecked with brass buttons, hat adorned with a plume. “No costume, eh?” He scowled at Daniel.

  “Are you polishing the handles of the big front door or scaring the passengers off?”

  “You’re hilarious. The bar’s across the main deck, me hearty.” Sammy walked outside to greet someone else.

  Daniel wasn’t prepared for the sight. Most of the crowd—at least 150 people ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s—was costumed in full Gilbert and Sullivan regalia, undulating and full of life in the twenty-foot-ceilinged main room. The stereo blared songs from HMS Pinafore. A group in the corner represented the chorus from the Mikado, complete with pancake face makeup, pencil-line eyebrows and stenciled, ruby lips. He couldn’t discern which were women dressed as men, which were men dressed as women. Immediately to his left another Admiral was conversing with a svelte, dark-haired woman in civilian dress, either a newcomer to the annual bash or a slacker like Daniel.

  The entire left wall was devoted to tables crammed with food. Daniel walked past them to the bar, carrying two bottles of a respectable burgundy. At the bar he handed his wine to the Pirate of Penzance who was tending it, one of his hosts.

  Jonathan uncorked one, poured Daniel a glass and stashed the bottles under the bar. Daniel turned back to look at the floor again.

  His eyes strayed back to the Mikado girls, then to the woman in civvies. She wore a bright red silk dress and had jet-black, straight hair. She was short, perhaps five foot four, and powerful. Not fireplug-powerful, more like a dancer, athletic. In fact, she moved the way dancers move, a mixture of subtlety and energy. Even just standing up as she did now when their eyes met, a sharp juxtaposition of opulence at rest with a muscular explosion as if into a pirouette. Daniel smiled. She smiled back. He was curious about who she was. He’d find out later.

  Daniel made the rounds. More than once his eye settled on the black-haired woman in the red silk dress. “You two’ve been looking at each other all night,” Sammy said to Daniel, appearing out of nowhere. “Get over there and talk to her.”

  Daniel headed over to the bar for another glass of wine.

  It’s come to this. Now my gay friends are telling me how to meet women. As he stopped at the bar his eye found the red dress again. He looked at the woman closer. She was petite, with full, uplifted breasts, not like any he’d ever seen on stage at the New York City Ballet. She moved again with that languid grace followed by another catlike spurt of energy. He heard her uninhibited laugh, the one his ear had caught more than a few times during the evening from across the room. She was very slender, very athletic and very difficult to take his eyes off of.

  Daniel poured wine for himself and a glass for her, resolving to use it to get a conversation started. When he looked up he saw her standing next to him, smirking.

  “I can spot a good glass of burgundy at fifty paces,” she said, taking the glass he offered.

  Great smile. Great eyes. “Hi, I’m Daniel Youngblood.”

  “Lydia,” she said. “Lydia Fauchert.” She sipped the wine. “Mmmm. Good. Thank you.” She spoke with a lilting, sing-songy accent he couldn’t place. Maybe a tinge of a British accent within that melodic cadence. Her words were crisp and distinct, as though she’d been formally taught her English.

  “Are you foreign?” he asked. “European?”

  “Ish.”

  Daniel leaned forward. “Oh?”

  “From Europe, Asia, all around. I was raised always on the move. But mostly Europe. So I’m European-ish.”

  “I see,” he managed. She laughed.
Her black hair flew as if in mockery, but her black eyes exuded warmth. Confident. She smiled. There was something unusual about her smile that drew him in. I think I’m going to enjoy this. “So do you have a place around here or are you just visiting?”

  “Visiting. I’m only in the country for a few weeks.”

  “Vacation?”

  “No. A job. I was here on a shoot, now I’m goofing off for a few days with the Mikado girls over there,” she motioned with her head. “Models. I’m a fashion photographer.”

  “Ah.” That would account for the restrained personality.

  “I see you’re out of costume, too,” she said. “Visiting?”

  “No. My weekend place is in town.”

  “Are you from New York City?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Professional look. And boarding school.”

  “Both true.”

  “Ah,” she said brightening, as though she’d learned a major secret. “I can see you with those suede patches on the elbows of your tweed jacket when you’re alone in your den.” They were standing off to the side of the crowd and now Daniel could see her legs more clearly. Dancer’s legs. They were slim, long and muscular. Their skin was creamy.

  They walked for a while together, Daniel introducing her here and there. They made their way back to the bar and he poured them both another glass of wine. His mind drifted and he paused, unconscious of the party for a moment.

  “Oh, what’s that all about?”

  He looked at her, confused. “I’m sorry?”

  “You suddenly looked very serious, like you just remembered you left the kettle on the flame.”

  “No, just an undigested bit of the week intruding upon my weekend.”

  “Slings and arrows?”

  “Quoting Shakespeare or regaling me with my past?”

  “Regaling.”

  “I’ve been regaled enough lately, thank you very much. Eat it for lunch all week. Today’s my day off.”

  She tightened her lips. “I’ll top it,” she said half under her breath.

  “I’ll bite, you go first,” Daniel said.

  She took a long swallow of her wine and looked at him like she was trying to decide if she thought this game was a good idea. “Lady’s prerogative, you first.”

  Daniel shrugged. “Let’s see, father a prominent lawyer. Straight As. Sunday school. All-star Little Leaguer with dreams of baseball greatness crushed by the introduction of the curve ball in junior high school. Couldn’t hit it.”

  “That’s the tragic part?”

  “Into each life some rain must fall.”

  “Drizzle. If this doesn’t start to get more interesting I’m going back to those Admirals.” Her smile told him otherwise.

  “Choate, Yale, then two years as a financial analyst in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group at Goldman Sachs. Harvard Business School, then back to Goldman for ten years as the quintessential team player at the quintessentially team-oriented Wall Street firm. Then passed over for partner.”

  She locked her gaze on his eyes as he said it, searched his face. Her eyes had a searing presence. He felt as if she were trying to read his thoughts—no, that wasn’t it—sense his emotions. He softened his eyes and made himself more approachable. He was intrigued, and wanted her to know it.

  He turned to her as if to say, “Your move.”

  “Okay. Orphaned, never knew my parents at all. Raised more by the governess than by my legal guardian, Sophie, who adopted me as much, I think, as a lark as anything else. One of these Parisian socialites, you know.” She glanced at him knowingly as if he understood already. “Traveled in the best circles, but never really had a home. Europe, mostly France. Paris. Provence, a little place near Avignon. French Riviera. A few seasons in Northern Italy. The Orient. Sophie was very wealthy. I think I was a toy she always wanted and didn’t have. Used to trot me out for parties.”

  Daniel nodded. Maybe that would account for the accent. English learned on the Continent. And her ease; raised to know she could do anything, even before she developed the sense of it as she came to know she was beautiful. Maybe she was always beautiful. Careful. It makes them crazy.

  He asked, “Did you go to private school? College?”

  “Tutors, and a lot of life rammed down my throat at too young an age to swallow all of it properly.”

  “Read as: men?”

  “Lots. But not like you’re thinking. Grew up with wealthy hangers-around. Older, sophisticated.” She looked at him through seasoned eyes. “I learned how to take care of myself. Your turn,” she said.

  “Passed over for partner at Goldman a second time two years later.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “No it’s not, it’s a sling followed by an arrow.”

  She stopped walking and put her hand on her hip. “Suppose we start this over again. Less like some competition.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll start first. I grew up in Upper Montclair. It’s in Northern New Jersey. That’s a state…”

  “I know.” She rolled her eyes. “Just across the Delaware Ocean from here.” She smiled. “Paper route? Dog? Siblings?”

  “Yes, yes, two brothers and I’m the oldest.”

  “Never’ve guessed it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Only, silly man, that it’s obvious you’re somebody’s older brother.” They started walking. Daniel tried to place her age. He’d thought she was in her early thirties at first. Now he detected the beginnings of tiny crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes. Wisdom. He liked the fact that she didn’t wear any foundation or makeup on her face to try to cover them. She began to speak in one of her fluid spurts, waving her arms, almost spilling her wine in her enthusiasm, and curling her free hand to emphasize the words. “I have places in Paris and London, since most of my work is based in Europe. Although I’ve been doing a lot more shoots in New York and the Caribbean lately, so I’m thinking of getting a flat in New York, too.”

  He waited to see if she would offer anything about a current man in her life. They reached the front door and went out. The air outside was damp and surprisingly cool. It smelled of woods. A black-robed judge in a white wig, a sailor and a few pirates lounged in white wicker on the front porch. Daniel and Lydia walked down the steps and across the driveway until the chirps of the crickets were louder than the voices from the porch. He still waited to see if she would mention a man. He gave it a little more time. She stopped, stood smiling in silence.

  “Where are you staying out here?” he asked.

  “A little bed and breakfast outside town. One of the girls rented a car. God,” she widened those big black eyes, “models can’t drive. They’re going back tomorrow. I figured I’d get to know the area, particularly if I may get a New York place.”

  An opening? “I may be able to help you out.”

  They reached one of the entrances to Jonathan’s gardens. The grass was cool and damp when they crossed it. He saw the moonlight on the skin of her shoulders. Even creamier looking than her legs.

  They sat next to each other on a bench. “I suppose at the back of my mind in considering a flat in New York is an attempt to be a bit rooted for once,” she said, as if she’d been ruminating on her earlier train of thought. “It’s only in retrospect that I realize I grew up with sort of an empty existence, mostly.” Daniel was silent. “Don’t get me wrong. It was fabulous to go to so many places, see so much and to grow up around really fascinating people. Artists, politicians, actual royalty. And to have pretty much anything I wanted—Sophie was rich, but some of her crowd was super-rich. But years later I’ve learned that others grew up with a warmth and closeness I would like to have had. Those were things that took me a long time to find out were possible.” She looked at him for a response from underneath her hair, then swooshed it out of the way with a languid toss of her head so she could see his eyes. “Know what I mean?”

  “I didn’t grow up like that. Sound
s lonely.”

  “No. Soulless. But it doesn’t matter now.” She sat up straight. “But after that you’d think I’d have picked a profession with a little more emotional substance or depth. Fashion isn’t overflowing with profundity; some days I feel like what I guess I am. Somebody’s hired tool for the day.”

  “Tell me about it. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. Where I work now is an eat-what-you-kill realm of independent contractors. Yeah, I know what you mean. When it’s no fun anymore you really have to think seriously about getting out.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I hadn’t expected you to be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  She paused. “Open. Warm.”

  “How did you expect me to be like anything?”

  She shifted in her seat, as if she’d let out a secret. “Well, from afar you looked like rather a stiff with your nose in the air and two bottles of wine in your hands.”

  He laughed. The moon flickered out from behind a cloud and he saw her lips parted and her eyes exploring his. After a moment she said, “So what’s a man like you looking for now, Daniel.”

  “Trying to recapture something, I guess. One of my friends says trying to find something—or someone—to believe in again.”

  “Again?”

  “Angie. My wife, she passed away two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve had my own losses, too. I know how it feels. But I have spiritual beliefs, and they help after a loss, especially like yours.”

  Daniel didn’t feel the need to respond.

  “In my religion we believe that souls keep coming back until they get it right. Some who don’t even know they’re on the path get there because of how they live. Some who are trying incredibly hard can’t seem to do it properly and come back hundreds of times. So maybe you won’t meet up with Angie again, at least until the last journey, but maybe you will.”

  Daniel thought of Angie, wondering why he wasn’t seeing her framed in his mind, scolding him, teasing him, making him laugh. “If that’s the case, maybe Angie will need a few more turns. She had quite a temper. But she was exciting when she was mad.”