“And you all shared in it.”
Ariana nodded.
“This… Clymer, yourself…”
“Me and Claude and Clymer and Marie and Harry.”
“Five of you.”
“As far as I know.”
“Goddamn.” Howard’s eyes rolled to the side as he calculated. “I suppose you all shared equally. You said the interest… that’s, hell, that’s five million in interest — just interest. ” He gaped at her. “I don’t even… I don’t even know how to calculate the principal on something like that.” He stopped. “Are you sure?”
“What do you think, Bill?”
Howard spoke softly. “You stupid idiots. And you’re surprised that Schrade wants to kill you?”
“Of course not, not after he found out what we had done. But I am surprised that he finally discovered it.”
Howard was incensed but controlling it. “You’ve been talking interest here. What about the principal?”
“Harry stipulated that we never touch the principal. We’ve been splitting only the interest.”
Howard’s hand was in front of his mouth, holding the cigarette as he sucked on it. “And how does that work?”
“It just shows up in my account in Cyprus. Quarterly.”
“Who’s responsible for that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re just trusting whoever.”
“That’s right.” She smiled grimly. “I told you, that’s how the world is today. Marie set it up.”
Howard was still, brooding in the dull lamplight, the smoke from his cigarette rising in front of him, sometimes fogging around the lampshade before dissipating, adding another layer of acrid stench to the wallpaper in the room of conspiracies.
“Okay,” he said after a minute or two, “okay, you don’t know where Harry and Marie are.”
“No.”
“Claude’s gone.”
She nodded.
“Clymer?”
“I have no idea.”
Howard smoked. Ariana had put out her cigarette a while ago and wanted another, but she had already smoked far too much. What she wanted was a drink, but she didn’t say so.
“I don’t understand why you’re not already dead,” he grunted as he shifted on the sofa. His white shirt was growing more wrinkled by the hour. “He obviously found Claude.”
“Maybe that was because Claude was still selling him drawings.”
“What?”
“He signaled that in one of his advertisements.”
“So he was sticking his head in the lion’s mouth.”
“Something like that.”
“I didn’t have any idea that mild-mannered bear had that kind of balls.”
“There’s a lot you didn’t have any idea about, Bill.”
Howard snorted, looked toward the green light of the window. “You people… I don’t know.” He turned back to her. “You don’t know anything about how Schrade reacted to this? You don’t know what he’s doing? Do you know anything about him?”
“I heard he cut his ties with the FIS about eighteen months ago.”
“No, damn it. I mean about this, about discovering what the hell you’ve done.”
“All I know is that Claude did not put his advertisement in the International Herald Tribune. I know that means that he couldn’t. I know that is the trigger that was supposed to warn me that something had broken loose.” She paused for emphasis. “And I know Schrade’s going to kill me if the FIS doesn’t stop him.”
Howard nodded impatiently, irritated at her persistence.
“Okay, okay. They’re going to want to hear more from you, that’s for damn sure. I’ll take it back to them. I’ll do the best I can, but, hell, this is huge. This is a fucking disaster.”
Ariana stared at him. She didn’t like the way he was sounding. She had a bad feeling about it. Panic grew in her chest, and every beat of her heart became a labored struggle for breath and for self-control.
CHAPTER 17
Until now Mara’s eyes had never left him, not even for a second, not even a glance away. As Strand moved from the window and began pacing, she got up from the bed and walked to the closet, tossing her towel over the back of a chair. She slipped on her dressing gown, tying the sash as she walked to the French doors to look outside. Strand stopped pacing and looked at her. She had folded her arms, and the light coming in from the balcony struck her across her chest and fell the full length of her to the floor. Her face was in the shadow.
He felt so terribly bad for her. He had presented himself to her as being stable and reliable and, if complex, at least straightforward. Strand knew very well how he came across to most people, and he had always used that knowledge to his advantage. If things had been different, she might never have known at all about the man within the man, even if she had lived with him for the rest of their lives.
All of this ran through Strand’s mind as he paused before going on. He wanted her to put his deception into its proper context. Time, he knew, was growing short, but he needed to set things right between them if he could. He realized that whatever he salvaged out of this mess he salvaged for them, not just for himself. If he was going to have anything to live for when all of this was over, he had to redeem himself to Mara Song.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
There was a moment of silence as she continued looking out over the balcony. The peacock nearby cried several times, a wild, otherworldly sound.
“I don’t have any idea how to answer such a question,” she said.
“I know this sounds bizarre…”
She nodded. “Yes, exactly. Bizarre.” Her eyes were focused on the palms in the garden. “I want you to get to the point, Harry. You said something horrible had happened. I need for you to get to the point of all this.” She paused. “Then I’ll tell you if I’m all right.”
Strand took a few steps, to the edge of the sunlight on the stone floor.
“Schrade, of course, accepted our offer. Soon the arrangement was working perfectly. Schrade was productive and had no scruples whatsoever about betraying the people he worked with, always shrewd and careful to cover his tracks. He was brilliant at it.”
Mara turned around, her back leaning against the hinged edge of the French doors.
“You should know that the FIS is strictly an intelligence organization-it has no prosecutive role at all. It doesn’t get involved with covert action. It gathers intelligence. That’s all it does. This intelligence is passed on to policy makers. They use it however they want, whatever suits their purpose. Usually it gets caught up in politics. Intelligence is power, and power is the ultimate political tool. An intelligence organization is its government’s fly on the wall. The fly’s job is to observe and then report what it saw. It may witness all manner of crime and treachery, but it never gets involved, not even to prevent something horrible.
“Anyway, Schrade’s illicit profits were laundered by several money managers who worked for him. One of these was a woman named Rosemarie Bienert. Her history with Schrade was… complicated. She was brilliant, held university degrees in international economics and finance. He called her Marie. I called her Romy.”
Mara reacted briefly in surprise. Suddenly, unexpectedly, taking Strand aback, her eyes glistened with tears. He quickly looked away from her and then went on.
“I’d actually met Romy while Schrade was spying on the Russians for us. I was his case officer, and Schrade was such an arrogant bastard that he often demanded I go to him in secret at his villa on Schwanenwerder, an
