CHAPTER 22

ANNIE WAS IN TROUBLE. After Carol left in the limo, she reviewed the situation. She hadn’t wanted to go to lunch with Brian. He’d insisted. She wanted to tell Carol about the missing bearer bonds herself. He’d resisted. Over a mountain of rainbow sushi at a Japanese restaurant, he told her to keep her mouth shut in the meeting.

“I’m going to fix this,” he assured her. He was particularly adamant about not burdening Carol with knowledge of missing assets. “Believe me, she’ll flee if she finds out. Who wouldn’t?” he argued. Annie agreed he had a point there, but it still didn’t seem right to her.

Then, after agreeing to come much later in the day, Carol had surprised them by arriving early. They’d ended up keeping her waiting. That was an unfortunate accident, but it was no accident that Carol was in a crazy mood by the time they got there. Annie hadn’t anticipated how bitterly angry Carol was about so many things. To make matters worse, Brian worked his magic on Carol just as he said he would. He flattered and charmed and calmed her down so that she changed her mind about taking the account away. While this was going on, every fiber of Annie’s being screamed at her to come clean and tell the truth. Someone, most likely Carol’s own father, had taken a quarter of a million dollars in bearer bonds that belonged to Carol. She should be aware of it. She should be told.

As Annie walked Carol down the hall to the elevator, and finally outside to the curb where the car was waiting, she debated telling her right then. She knew she had to do it sometime, but after practically accusing Carol’s father of lying about cancer, how could she now accuse him of stealing Carol’s money, too? Maybe it was too much for Carol to handle in twenty-four hours. And Brian had urged her to wait. Maybe she should wait.

She didn’t say anything when they got to the door of the office because Frisk and Darian were standing there. Downstairs was even more crowded. For Annie it was a particularly tough moment. This was the kind of thing that had to be done gently, and there were so many people around . . .

In the end she just couldn’t tell her friend she’d let her down. She felt like a coward. After everything that had happened between Ben and Matthew, she didn’t want to lose Carol’s high regard. She couldn’t bear to let the friendship go in a second. They could argue on the phone, bitch at each other, and feel resentment, but the two women had known each other for a long time. They’d talked about pretty much everything. Carol had been loyal to her despite Matthew’s complaint against Ben. And the two women had another bond, too—the girls. Mag and Bebe had no other adult woman in their lives. Carol was like their aunt. Annie couldn’t take that away from them.

There was too much history, and Carol didn’t have children of her own. She’d always been close to Mag and Bebe. As soon as the girls had gotten old enough to sit like grown-ups at the table, Carol used to take them to lunch at Serendipity on Saturdays. Every Christmas she’d taken them to The Nutcracker, the Big Apple Circus, and all the animated Disney films. She had little birthday parties for them and always bought them great gifts. How could Annie return Carol’s trust, loyalty, and friendship with such terrible news? Someone was a thief, and it was probably her dad. She decided to tell Carol tonight, after she’d had a chance to calm down.

Still, as Annie returned to her office, her sin of omission felt like a tightening noose around her neck. Nothing like this had ever happened to her. She didn’t play games with her clients. She’d always been honest no matter how tough the truth was. Now there was a hole somewhere inside her where honesty used to reign. She closed the door in her office. Never had she felt so alone. Brian had promised that he would continue to investigate, but Annie knew that since he’d never seen the bonds, he was going to take the position that they’d never been out of the owner’s possession. In a wall of offices across the street, Annie could see a woman hurrying to her desk with a huge bowl of popcorn. Every day at this time, the large woman gave herself this particular treat. It always meant the stock market had closed.

Annie’s phone rang, and since Petra was already gone, she answered it herself. “This is Annie Custer.” She twirled in her chair to face the window.

“Annie Custard, it’s Vartan.”

“Who?” Static on the line prevented her from hearing the name.

“Vartan Vole. I’m calling from Stockholm. I have something very big coming in.”

“Oh, Vartan.” Annie’s heart spiked with anxiety. She’d hoped her day was over.

“What time is it there? My Rolex says it’s nearly four your time.”

“Well, it’s after four.” She knew this by the popcorn eater across the street, but she checked her watch anyway. Annie’s watch was a watch. It didn’t have a fancy name. She thought Vartan Vole was a weird duck, but sometimes weird ducks came through with the goods. “Where are you, Vartan?”

“I’m on the way to the airport in my Mercedes. I’m flying first-class to Stockholm. I talked to Alan this morning. He told me the economy still had room for stimulation.”

“Uh-huh.” Vartan always had a different story about where he was, but Annie knew when he said Alan, he meant Alan Greenspan.

“That means rates might go lower,” he added.

“I know what it means, Vartan.” It was what the head of the Federal Reserve Bank had said in his press conference that morning. Nothing new there. She didn’t think he’d actually spoken to Greenspan at all. “What can I do for you?”

“Baby, didn’t you get my message that I have a transaction coming through? I’m putting big business in your lap. Pay attention.”

“I always pay attention.” Annie needed big business in her lap, but she didn’t like being called baby.

“Didn’t your girl tell you that we’re wire-transferring two hundred million into the account? The bank in London has just confirmed the transfer.”

“Yes, Vartan. Petra gave me the message yesterday. But nothing came in.”

“What? I can’t believe it. Hornbill Financial assured me it would be there today. Are you sure you have the accounts set up correctly for the Canadian corporation?”

Annie swiveled back and forth in her chair. “Vartan, I told you last week that we can’t open an account for a Canadian corporation. It’s not an option.”

“No, no. Annie, I told you to forget that International Northern account. We opted to open the account in my name and flow the funds through me to the charities involved. Do you have my list of transfers?”

“Well, I have the account in your name. But what does that have to do with this Canadian deal?”

“It’s not a Canadian deal. International Northern represents a pension fund.”

“Is that where the money is coming from, the pension fund?”

“And insurance companies, of course. They’ve mandated a sale of commercial paper for this particular transaction. Why are you asking me this?”

“We need to know where the money is coming from to make sure everything is legal,” Annie told him.

“Well, I told you Hornbill Financial is handling this,” he said irritably. “What’s your problem? Do I need to go somewhere else?”

Annie sighed and let him stew. She’d never heard of Hornbill Financial. It hadn’t come up on her Web search. That didn’t necessarily mean it didn’t exist: Money traveled around the world along strange pathways all the time. However, they couldn’t do things the old way anymore. They had to know who was sending it and what the money was for. She thought of Ben’s overseas customer and shuddered.

Back in late 2000, a young man from Egypt had been extremely active. He’d wired a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars in and out of his account every week. He was forever on the phone moving money, and they hadn’t thought anything of it. People moved money around all the time—it was how business got done. Even after 9/11, she hadn’t thought much about it. But accounts that behave like that are flagged by compliance people and regulators—those anonymous watchers who are supposed to keep things legal. Ben’s client was called Habib. As soon as the FBI got involved in Habib’s investigation, the accounts were frozen and Habib disappeared from the face of the earth. The FBI had investigated Ben, and that was strike two. Maybe it was his strike three in his own mind, who knew?

Annie sighed again because the money business was being watched by several different agencies, and she didn’t know anything about Vartan Vole except that he was the son-in-law of a friend. It didn’t make him good or bad, but these issues were complicated. It wasn’t always easy to decipher who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Annie would never do anything illegal, but if Hornbill Financial existed, if it was on the up-and-up, and if it had two hundred million to throw her way, it would make her one of the most important brokers on Wall Street. In her present financial crunch, she was hardly going to let that opportunity get away.

“Didn’t Petra open the account for me?” Vartan asked.

“Yes, of course she did,” Annie assured him.

“Then the money should have hit,” he insisted.

If that much money had hit one of her customer’s accounts, Annie would know about it. She swiveled back to look up the account number, then punched it into her computer just in case. But no, the balance stood at $1,000—nine thousand less than the amount he’d deposited to open it. He just didn’t look or act like the big player he said he was. “No, Vartan. It hasn’t hit,” she told him.

“I can’t believe this. There must be some explanation.”

She gazed sadly at the balance in the account. “Give me the tracking number, I’ll check it out for you,” she said pleasantly.

“This transaction is being cleared through London. I don’t know what the tracking numbers are. I give them the transfer information you give me. Let me assure you. We’ll be moving the funds around the world for humanitarian causes, but at least one-third will always be held in your hands. I want you to profit from this, so call me back. My Mercedes is going through a tunnel.”

“Look, Vartan, I’m going to have to talk to my manager about all this. We need to clear a few things up.”

“Good, good. Clear it up.” He hung up.

It was after four P.M, and the Dow had closed a meager four points up. It had been a scary day. Annie knew that Brian was anxious about having the account of another Mack to worry about, and now there was this whole Vartan thing. He wasn’t going to like this. She was exhausted. She slipped her shoes off and put her head back against the shiny leather of her chair to watch the woman across the street. The poor woman didn’t know she looked like a gorilla in the zoo.

Annie closed her eyes for some relief. She wished Carol had the guts to uncover the truth about her mother. She wished the bonds weren’t missing after all, that Vartan Vole really had big money, and that she could go home and have a pleasant evening with Ben and her girls. All those things were just dreams, but she dreamed them anyway. Then she heard a voice.

“Annie, listen. It’s been a tough day. Let’s go out for a drink and talk this over.”

She opened her eyes. Brian stood in the doorway. He had loosened his tie and opened his shirt collar. With his worked-out body and dark hair, he looked a lot like a movie-star version of a banker, or a lawyer, or a stockbroker. She glanced at her watch, which read four fifteen. The last thing she wanted to do was to go home and face the particular music playing there. For the first time ever, it occurred to her that a drink with Brian after work could buffer the pain.

“Great idea,” she said, shuffling her feet around under her desk for her shoes. That’s how it started.