Swimming with Sharks (61 page)

Nelson took the small recorder out of his robe pocket, pressed the stop button, and handed it to Constanzia.

“What will you do?” she asked. “Will you really return to him?”

“No”—Nelson sighed and shook his head—“I’ve made my decision. Nevertheless, I’m sorry that you—”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” Constanzia quickly cut him off and hugged him. “I’ve waited years for this opportunity. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my revenge for everything that he’s done to me. I’m not afraid of him.”

Van Mieren smiled sadly.

“You’re very brave, Connie.”

“Someone has to do it,” she said, tears sparkling in her eyes. “Sergio is responsible for so many deaths. And there’s no end in sight.”

Apart from the noise of the rain tapping against the window, it was completely silent.

“I should be the one to do what you’re doing,” Nelson said, his voice cracking, “but I’m a coward. I’ve been a coward all my life.”

He turned toward his wife.

“Forgive me, my love,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Then Nelsen turned around and walked to his office with wobbly steps. He closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk. There was no hope left that he would ever be healthy again. The cancer had been eating away at his body silently and now it was too late. Nelson had prepared himself for death over the past weeks, and now he felt ready to go. The room was filled with the sweet smell of flowers standing in a vase on the mantel. He took a gun out of the top drawer of the desk and looked at it reverently. Sergio had given him the weapon many years ago, but he had never used it. Until today. Nelson’s eyes wandered to
the window. It was a drizzly, dark day. The rain outside had just turned to snow. It was sticking to the wet grass, leaving a thin white film. His thoughts raced back to the days of his youth. Would his life have taken the same course if he had known then what he knew now? He shrugged his shoulders. His decision was made. He slowly loaded a bullet into the chamber, closed his eyes, pressed the gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger.

Today the giant Christmas tree was lit at Rockefeller Center. It shone with thousands of little lights over the city, buzzing with a pre-Christmas bustle. The temperature had dropped, and the rain of the past days had turned into thick, wet snowflakes.

Nick Kostidis stood at his office window with a cup of coffee and stared into space. They had all worked through the night. Lloyd Connors had temporarily declared Nick’s office an improvised command center for the planned operation. The preparations for the first strike were in full swing. Connors had ordered his most trusted staff members to city hall the very same night, and they started analyzing the documents that Alex had procured for them. Some of the names on the bank statements were unfamiliar, but it was clear that these people also held important positions. Nick and Connors agreed that they needed to act as quickly as possible so Vitali wouldn’t gain any additional advantage. They called Attorney General Gordon Engels that same night and briefly explained the politically charged case to him. Nick knew Engels personally, and he had no doubts about his integrity. Engels intended to come to New York in person the very next morning with his best people. Since it was clear to Nick and Connors that they couldn’t risk bringing in the NYPD due to Jerome Harding’s involvement, they had turned to the FBI for assistance. FBI Deputy Director Tate Jenkins informed them that he would arrive in
the city in the early morning, accompanied by two agents from a special division of the FBI dealing with investigations of public officials.

Nick drank the last sip of coffee and grimaced. He used to love days like this. He always found the tree-lighting one of his most pleasant duties, but he had a hard time focusing on the hundred-foot-tall Norway spruce in Rockefeller Center today. He had sent other city hall representatives to various events in the city’s boroughs, and he would stop by Rockefeller Center in the late afternoon. He had caught himself thinking that he should have called Mary last night to tell her that he probably wouldn’t make it home. During his stint as a US attorney, he’d had to do that more than once. But it stung when he realized that no one was waiting for him anymore. Nick let out a tormented sigh. He felt a permeating sense of inadequacy joined with his feelings of pain and loneliness. He knew how silly it was to imagine that Alex felt more for him than mere sympathy. At thirty-eight, she was sixteen years younger than he was. He had read a lot into her sympathy. He probably felt more affection for the young woman than she did for him, which disturbed him; he feared that his affection could cloud his sense of judgment.

“I still can’t understand it,” Connors said, interrupting Nick’s train of thought. He had put his feet up on the table and rolled up his sleeves. Like all of the others in the room, he had bloodshot eyes and sipped at one of the countless cups of coffee that he had consumed over the course of the night.

“This could turn out to be the biggest scandal since Watergate.”

“It certainly seems like it,” Nick said as he turned away from the window. “I just hope it’s enough to put Vitali behind bars once and for all.”

“It will be, believe me! He’ll never get out of prison!” Connors laughed grimly, but Nick just sighed.

He had thought the same thing many times before, but every time Vitali had managed to squirm free like a fish from the net. He had an army of highly paid and extremely smart lawyers who knew every loophole in
the law. They’d probably succeed again in getting him off the hook. But it would damage his empire significantly if there were no more judges, senators, police commissioners, and state attorneys to cover his back. Nick was surprised to notice that it didn’t mean as much to him to bring Vitali to court. It was much more important to him that Alex was safe.

Connors stood up and walked over to the large whiteboard where they had written the names of all the people who appeared to be involved in this scandal. His initial skepticism had turned into euphoria and excitement. He worked with total commitment. Looking at the younger man, Nick was briefly reminded of himself. He was exactly the same way back in the day! He had worked day and night for weeks on end to accomplish his goal. Similar to Connors, he could motivate his employees and get the best work out of them. Yes, Connors was certainly the right man for this operation. He wasn’t influenced by personal emotion but proceeded with the logic and clear calculation of a US attorney.

“We’ll paralyze half of the city,” Connors continued. “It’ll affect almost every administrative body. Vitali has pulled them all to his side. It’s incredible! Engels and Jenkins will be shocked when they see this!”

“I hope so,” Nick said.

“What do you mean?” Connors looked at him in surprise.

“What I mean is that I hope that hasn’t also bought someone like Engels.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.” Nick ran his hand though his hair. “Before, I would have put my hand in the fire for Harding or Judge Whitewater.”

“Hmm,” Connors said, scratching his chin pensively, “I’ll definitely pay a visit to de Lancie with two US marshals today and let him know that we suspect him of corruption. My intuition tells me that he would do anything to save his ass. At the very least, he’ll bow out of the Sontheim investigation.”

He sat down again and took a bite of a bagel.

“We’ll warn him that we’re informing the attorney general. And we’ll do the same thing with Judge Whitewater, Governor Rhodes, and the senators.”

“What about Harding?” Nick asked. “He’s dangerous. He’ll vehemently defend himself.”

“Harding is a driving force in the St. John homicide investigation,” Connors said after thinking for a moment. “He can do some serious damage if we leave him unchecked.”

“But Vitali could become suspicious if de Lancie and Harding suddenly get sick,” Nick said. “You should leave him alone for a couple of days. I think it’s more important to contact the SEC investigation unit. I could call Rob Dreyfus. We cooperated with him back when we investigated the Bahamian banks. Now he’s the government representative for the SEC.”

Connors’s staff member Tracy Taylor entered the office.

“What’s up, Tracy?” Connors asked. “Did you find anything about this lawyer from California?”

“Yes,” the young woman said, frowning apologetically. “I’m afraid that someone else got to him before us. Someone set his house on fire two nights ago. The police found a burned body that was most likely that of Sturgess’s girlfriend. They initiated a search for John Sturgess after he didn’t show up at his office yesterday. A surfer found his body close to the pier in Newport Beach two hours ago.”

“Oh shit,” Connors said. Nick just raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t the first time that he’d seen the silencing of a witness.

“Nick,” Frank Cohen said as he entered the room, “Mr. Engels and Mr. Jenkins just arrived.”

“Great,” Connors said gleefully, rubbing his hands eagerly, “let’s get this party started.”

Justin had booked a double room with a view at a five-star hotel on Lake Zurich under the names of Frank and Emily Chambers. There was an international warrant out for German citizen Alex Sontheim for suspected homicide, but no one would care if an American couple booked a hotel room—even if the husband never showed up. Alex almost fell asleep in the taxi that drove her from Zurich’s Kloten Airport. Throughout the flight, she was frightened that someone would discover she was traveling under a fake passport, but nothing happened. Furthermore, her transformation was perfect. When she caught her relection in the mirror, Alex could hardly believe that the woman with the short dark curls and blue eyes was her. After almost seventy-two hours without sleep, she longed for a hot bath and a comfortable bed.

There was complete silence as Lloyd Connors finished his report. Gordon Engels and Tate Jenkins had showed up with three US marshals, Deputy Thomas J. Spooner, Deputy Randy Khazaeli, and Deputy Joe Stewart; and three FBI agents, Samuel Ramirez, Jeffrey Quinn, and Steve O’Brien. Everyone, including Nick, Frank, and Connors’s staff, sat at the mayor’s conference table.

“So these are the facts that we’ve gathered so far,” Connors said, looking around the table. “It appears that Vitali has been bribing almost every important man in New York City and Albany for years. We have everyone listed here: the governor, senators, the police commissioner of New York City, the US attorney of the Southern District, federal judges, city council members, officers of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and even officials from the Department of State, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Commerce in Washington.”

“Unbelievable,” Engels commented after a brief silence. He was a skinny, gray-haired man with alert eyes behind thick glasses.

Jenkins remained skeptical. “How credible is this information?” he wanted to know.

“Very credible,” Connors replied.

“I’m afraid,” Engels said with a frown, knocking his knuckles on the copies of the bank statements, “that this is going to be an enormous scandal. We don’t know what might happen when the people find out that almost every high-ranking official in New York accepted bribes.”