Few people knew Victor Kemp had not one but three children. His wife bore him a single daughter, Annabel. His mistress, Luisa Guzman, presented him with a son three years later, then another son five years after that. Kemp was beside himself over his good fortune. To have sons by a woman such as Luisa, with her dark beauty, her intelligence, and her independence, meant more to Kemp than he could say. He respected her business acumen; her connections proved invaluable on several occasions. He enjoyed her company in and out of bed. Most significantly, he trusted her. She knew about his two worlds and accepted them both. She never judged.
Luisa originally came from money, which her father Guillermo lost to bad investments and worse partners. Facing threats to his family and his life, he sought to marry off his eldest child at eighteen to a wealthy much-older suitor. Luisa refused. With her mother and brother’s support, she defied him and the cultural expectations of a sexist Latin culture. She earned a business degree and became a well-regarded and wealthy real estate broker serving an international clientele. Failing to intimidate the women in his family, her father abruptly left. She took care of her mother until the old woman died.
Luisa met Kemp through one of her clients when she was just twenty-two. He never considered what attracted her to him. Not his wealth; she’d already begun to build her own bank account. Not his looks, either. Perhaps it was the aura of danger that traveled with him. Whatever the reasons, she immediately connected with him.
Her younger brother had the opposite reaction. He was repelled by her suitor. Fortunately for Kemp, Luisa ignored her sibling’s advice on her love life. She nevertheless remained close to the brother, who became a doting uncle.
Luisa made her own choices, however. She chose Victor Kemp.
Kemp understood that Luisa lived her life more or less on her own terms. She invested herself in her children and her career. Her success required determination and even a particular strain of ruthlessness. Her resourcefulness impressed him. He also liked that she didn’t need him but apparently wanted him.
Kemp’s sons were unalike in every way possible. Paulo’s soft blond hair and soulful blue eyes evoked his European ancestry. He seemed a gentle boy without his father’s rough edges. Luisa thought of him as her little angel. A quiet, diligent student, he took up fencing and developed a passion for baseball. “Thinking man’s sports,” Kemp claimed.
The younger son, with his wavy dark-brown hair and limpid brown eyes, resembled his mother. The boy traded on his considerable charm from the time he was a toddler. Indifferent about school, he preferred spending time at the beach or on the soccer field. He played the sport aggressively, earning a spot as starting wingman. He took up surfing. As a teen, he’d go off to hot spots like Itacaré and hang with an older crowd. Luisa put up with his antics. Kemp accepted that a single mother and a career woman could only do so much. They both hoped he’d settled down.
Kemp traveled to Rio as often as he could. The visits amounted to perhaps six in a year, no more than four or five days at a time. The four of them even managed a few vacations together, to Miami, Nice, and Cancun. He hoped these brief interludes would suffice as family time. At least, he reasoned, the boys had Luisa’s family around. If he functioned less as a father than as a wealthy European uncle with a soft spot for the two boys, so be it. Knowing so little about him, his sons never learned to fear him. They looked forward to his visits, expecting to be spoiled. They were rarely disappointed.
The two brothers attended excellent private schools in Rio. Paulo excelled at math and science. His parents thought he might pursue a career in medicine or research. He had other ideas. Despite infrequent contact, he formed an early and abiding attachment to Victor. At nine years of age and again at fourteen, he announced his intention to work with his father. Perhaps he hoped to make up for the man’s absence. Maybe he yearned for international experience. In any event, he made up his mind and would not be dissuaded.
Kemp never anticipated either of his sons would join his business. He found himself unexpectedly touched. As he deferred to the boys’ mother when it came to their upbringing, he broached the subject carefully.
“If you’d like, I can put a stop to this immediately.”
“You can, but why even try? He has his mind made up. Young minds can change, though. Give it some time and let’s see what happens. He must attend college first, yes?”
Kemp agreed. Children changed; they became independent and shifted allegiances. He couldn’t help being delighted by the prospect of being in business with a blood relative. Paulo had found his way into his father’s well-protected heart. Once there, he was impossible to dislodge.
The eldest son attended the London School of Economics and graduate school at Columbia University, where he enrolled as Paul Guzman. Just as he finished, his brother arrived in Manhattan to study real estate at New York University. He announced he would be using his middle name, Daniel. His parents acquiesced. Luisa even joked about it.
“We have two North American children now.”
Daniel’s decision pleased Kemp. He worried the younger son had inherited his maternal grandfather’s unfortunate combination of avarice and weakness. The name change and the chosen major together suggested the boy might have a backbone after all.
Kemp suddenly saw more of his sons as young adults than he’d ever seen of them as children. He enjoyed his expanded role. Daniel obliged the older man by meeting for dinner every other week, where he shared amusing stories of college exploits. Otherwise, he lived his own life, which Kemp decided would be indulged only to a point.
Paul meanwhile went to work in the finance department of Kemp’s legitimate corporate entity. Not long afterward, the son came to his father, troubled about a discrepancy he’d uncovered. The problem concerned a tiny import-export business, a client of the parent company.
“You see?” He spoke in English. “Some of the exported objects appear to be more valuable than reported, especially in countries where antiquities theft is a problem. I’m not saying we’re doing anything wrong, only that in a few instances, the export data doesn’t match the import data. I worry these are items that may have been stolen.”
Many of Kemp’s clients unknowingly or deliberately facilitated criminal activities. The particular company that attracted Paul’s attention fronted a much larger operation involving the illicit buying and selling of high-value artifacts. That trade ranked behind only drugs and arms in terms of profitability. Dealers could get pieces out of object-rich countries like Greece, Egypt, and Iran with bribery and corruption. The irony was that even where exports were carefully monitored, for instance in tightly regulated Western nations, imports didn’t receive the same level of scrutiny. Once illegal goods left the country of origin, they might not register as contraband when coming into high-demand markets like Great Britain or the United States.
Kemp and his confederates took precautions in all their business dealings. On those infrequent occasions when mistakes were made, he expected well-paid employees to look the other way. He should have known his son would prove to be the exception.
“Paul.” Kemp got out only a single word before the younger man held up his hand, a gesture the father recognized as his own.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
“You’re quoting Aldous Huxley to me?”
“I am. Now I will follow with a question: Do you trust me?”
“Why on earth would you ask me something like that?”
“Just answer me.”
“You know I do.”
“Okay. Then you should know I’m not interested in rendering moral judgments. I simply need all the facts in order to best do my job. My interest is in making sure you can be even more successful than you already are.”
Kemp could not have loved his son more.
From then on, he kept nothing from Paul. He introduced his son to his intricate group of interconnected businesses, some related to the core business and some not, some legal, some not. He didn’t seek to explain or justify. He didn’t mention the lives he’d ruined or the deaths he’d caused. His son would ask, or he wouldn’t.
Paul didn’t ask. He began to suggest ways to streamline the various operations. He proposed jettisoning some activities and ramping up others. He drew up two organizational charts that tracked income and expenses as well as activities and personnel. They could be read independently; they also fit nicely one over the other to provide a comprehensive map of Kemp’s enterprise. It was a thing of genius.
Kemp didn’t hesitate; he made Paul his chief financial officer. The young man, who’d been at the firm only one year, was touted as an innovator. If the employees were startled by Paul’s rapid ascension, they kept it to themselves. While some may have suspected a special bond between the head of the company and his new star, no one asked. Kemp had thrown a lavish wedding for his daughter five years earlier. She was pregnant with her second child. He didn’t need to broadcast that he’d hired his illegitimate offspring.
His wife knew, of course. She chose to turn a blind eye, preferring the apartment in Knightsbridge and a handsome income to scandal and a divorce court. Kemp assumed his daughter remained oblivious. He wanted to keep it that way.
Father and son worked closely together for fifteen years. Paul consolidated or eliminated divisions, made recommendations to the board concerning certain opportunities, authorized (with Kemp’s permission) personnel changes, and relentlessly focused on profitability. He treated the non-legit side in the same manner, ferreting out inefficiencies with an unforgiving precision that matched his father’s. Paul suggested Kemp outsource more often. He endorsed selective investing in lucrative operations. Under his watch, profits rose.
While Victor Kemp wasn’t given to placing a premium on emotions, he felt content for the first time in his life. He genuinely enjoyed working. He felt expansive toward all his progeny. True, his other son caused him some concern. Daniel appeared bent on living as a stereotypical wealthy playboy. He was headed for trouble; Kemp had no doubt. He was close to putting his foot down. Luisa was sure to welcome the intervention.
Kemp’s one disappointment concerned the departure in 2006 of his favorite asset, the talented if stubbornly reluctant assassin. She'd deceived him once, despite knowing how he felt about treachery. He’d dealt with her, harshly perhaps, but how else to set an example? He’d at least permitted her to live. Then she walked out on him. The desertion rankled. Disrespect on top of disloyalty.
On the other hand, he knew he’d wounded her terribly. Keeping her around didn’t make any sense. Even an older animal can attack. If she wanted to go, he’d let her go. He didn’t need her, not now with his businesses organized and under the watchful eye of an heir apparent.
~
It began as idle chat by a derrick man working up the coast of Wales for a small drilling company owned by Kemp. The pay was good, the accommodations decent for being at sea. A typical day involved intense physical labor alternating with stretches of tedium. The derrick man entertained his fellow roughnecks with an account of his sleepy town on the Pembrokeshire coast. Nothing much happened until the arrival of an enigmatic woman. Supposedly she dwelt at the edge of a cliff with two men and an old crone. Rumors flew amongst the residents. Some thought she might be a witch. Others thought a family of spies lived outside their village.
The first Arkady Dyukov heard about the story was from a cousin he’d recommended to Kemp for a shipboard position. The grateful relative invited Dyukov to dinner in London at a hangout favored by working-class Eastern Europeans. Over copious amounts of vodka, the tale of the mysterious group emerged.
“I bet she’s in hiding,” his cousin guessed.
Something about the anecdote made Dyukov take notice. He knew all about the ex-employee, about her special talent and the cruel plan his employer designed when she dared to fall in love. He was surprised it had taken her so long to leave. On the other hand, her timing made sense. At that point, she was fifty years old. An old woman. How could Kemp object? He noticed his boss didn’t take her exit lightly. At least his son Paul found a way to move him past it. The old man’s fixation wasn’t good for business.
Now Dyukov felt compelled to look into this absurd story, if for no other reason than to put it to bed.
He confirmed the presence of the woman and two others outside a small town near the Bristol Channel. A younger man sometimes joined them, probably a son, or so the informants speculated. The husband, who went by the name Brian Davies, seemed to be the only one who ventured into town. He appeared an affable sort, comfortable talking about sea-related topics, although not about his family. The man spoke fluent Welsh. He politely declined all invitations to dinner or church, alluding to his mother’s illness and his wife’s preference for staying at the cottage.
Dyukov needed pictures. He went to Swansea and from there up the coast where he hired a local fisherman to take him out on the water. On the third day, his patience was rewarded. A woman came out from a stone cottage to sit at a bench that offered what must have been a breathtaking view of the Bristol Channel. He took photos with a digital long lens. They came out grainy, but Dyukov had little doubt about the subject. Somehow the woman Kemp sought to punish had ended up on the coast of Wales with her family alive and intact.
He had a bad feeling about all of it. He also knew he had to tell his employer.
From the day Victor Kemp learned his former assassin had outmaneuvered him, he found it difficult to eat, sleep, or concentrate on work. The happily reunited family living peacefully near the small fishing village represented an insult to his authority. He had let the woman go in the belief she would live out her days in misery. Once again, she’d gotten the upper hand. She had to pay for that. He would take care of it personally. He would end them all.
“Boss, if she’s there, it’s because she got help. For all we know, someone may still be protecting them. Is it really worth the risk?” Dyukov might as well have been talking to the wall. Kemp had made up his mind.
Paul was aware of Kemp’s peculiar relationship with the corporate security manager. The woman had been with the organization a long time. Polite, efficient, attractive in a nondescript way, and very knowledgeable, she counseled prudently and expertly on security issues. Gossip had it she possessed a set of exceptional and unconventional skills that Kemp found valuable. No one knew what those were. She stayed aloof from coworkers and gave away nothing.
Once, though, Paul had seen her observing his father during a meeting. In her veiled blue gaze, the son caught a glimpse of contempt or something worse: hatred. Had he imagined it? Did his father know how she felt? Kemp fumed when she resigned. Paul calmed him. Now, five years later, something agitated the older man. Paul believed it was related to the woman. He couldn’t say how he knew; he just did.
He confronted his father over lunch.
“What is she to you, this woman who used to work here? She’s been gone five years, yet she still bothers you.
“Paulo, please.”
“I remember how you were when she left, Papà. Angry, but not for long. You calmed down, focused on the work. Now you’re upset again. Worse than before, I think. The company is doing well. Our profitability is assured. It’s her. What did she do? Steal information? Go to work for a competitor?” He regarded his father steadily. “Don’t lie, not to me. I will know.”
Kemp looked into his son’s blue eyes and knew the truth of those words. “She cheated me, Paulo. She robbed me.”
“Of what?”
“Of revenge.” He waited for his son to press for details.
Paulo spoke at last. “You said you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“Then we must recover what you’re owed. Okay?”
“Okay.”
With that one word, Kemp set in motion the events that would end with the death of the only person he had ever truly loved.