The Dark Tide. Andrew Gross

He was out of the country, on business. But his secretary heard the agitation in Karen’s voice. Finally they tracked him down.

      “Karen …?”

      “Saul, I’m sorry to bother you.” She was almost on the verge of tears. She told him about the upsetting visit she’d had with two men from Archer.

      “Who?”

      “They’re from something called Archer and Bey Associates. They’re auditors, forensic investigators. It says they’re out of South Africa. They said they spoke with you.”

      He made her go through every detail again, injecting a few sharp questions about their names and specifically what they said.

      “Karen, listen. First, I want to assure you this is nothing you have to be concerned about. Harbor’s partnership dissolution is moving along smoothly, and I promise you it’s one hundred percent by the book. For the record, yes, Charlie may have taken a few losses at the end. He bet pretty heavily on some Canadian oil leases that took a hit.”

      “Who are these people, Saul?”

      “I don’t know. Some overseas accounting group, I suspect, but I’ll find out. They could have been hired by some of Charles’s investors over there, hoping to hold up the process.”

      “They’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, Saul! You know Charlie didn’t handle money like that. They were making these insinuations, warning me not to spend any of the proceeds. That’s Charlie’s money, Saul! It was creepy. They told me our personal accounts might be examined, too.”

      “That’s not going to happen, Karen. Look, there are some details pending that someone could make some issues on if they wanted—”

      “What kind of details, Saul?” She hadn’t heard any of that before.

      “Maybe some plays one could question. A glitch or two in one of Charles’s lending agreements. But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. This isn’t the time.”

      “Charlie’s dead, Saul! He can’t defend himself. I mean, how many times did I hear him fretting over goddamn nickels and dimes for his clients? Fractions of a fucking point. And these people, making innuendos like that … They had no right to come here, Saul.”

      “Karen, I want to assure you there’s no basis at all to what they’re talking about. Whoever they are, they’re just trying to stir up trouble. And they just went about it the wrong way.”

      “Yeah, Saul, they did.” The fury in her blood began to recede. “They damn well did go about it the wrong way. I don’t want them back in my house again. Thank God Samantha and Alex weren’t here.”

      “Listen, I want you to fax me that card, Karen. I’ll look into it from here. I promise, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

      “Charlie was a reputable guy, Saul. You know that better than anyone.”

      “I know that, Karen. Charlie was like a second son to me. You realize I always have your interests at heart.”

      She pushed the hair off her face to cool herself down. “I do….”

      “Send me the card, Karen. And I want to be the first to know if they contact you again.”

      “Thank you, Saul.”

      Suddenly something strange came over Karen, an unexplainable rush of tears. Sometimes it just happened like that. Out of nowhere. The thought of having to defend her husband. She let a few seconds elapse on the line while she regained control.

      “I mean it, Saul…. Really, thank you.”

      Her husband’s mentor told her softly, “You don’t even have to say it, Karen.”

      He didn’t have the heart to tell her now. Or the will.

      Lennick replaced the house phone in its cradle in the Old World lobby of the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich.

      A week ago his contact from the Royal Bank of Scotland had called, one of the lenders he had arranged for Charlie, who advanced his firm funds. It sounded perfunctory. The banker had a tone of slight concern.

      A random check of an oil tanker by a customs official in Jakarta had reached their attention.

      Lennick’s heart had come to a stop. He wheeled around back to his desk. “Why?”

      “Some kind of discrepancy,” the banker explained, “in the stated contents of the cargo.” Which was declared to have been 1.4 million barrels of oil.

      The tanker was found to be empty, the bank official declared.

      Lennick had turned ashen.

      “I’m sure there’s simply been some kind of mistake,” the Scottish banker said to him. It seemed that 1.4 million barrels at sixty-six dollars per had been previously pledged by Charles Friedman as collateral against their loan.

      The banker cleared his throat. “Is there any cause for alarm?”

      Lennick felt a shiver of concern race down his spine. He’d look into it, he told the man, and that was enough to make the banker feel appeased. But as soon as he put down the phone, Lennick closed his eyes.

      He thought of Charlie’s recent losses, the pressure he’d been under. The pressure they’d all been under. How heavily he’d leveraged up on his funds.

      You stupid son of a bitch, Charlie. Lennick sighed. He reached for the phone and started to dial a number. How could you be so desperate, you fool, so careless? Don’t you have any idea who these people are?

      People who didn’t like to be looked into. Or have their affairs examined. Now everything had to be reconstructed. Everything, Charlie.

      Even now, weeks later, in the Vier Jahreszeiten’s lobby, the banker’s all-too-delicate question made Lennick’s mouth go dry.

       Is there any cause for alarm?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

      It was the second day of field-hockey practice, near the end of February. Sam Friedman tossed her stick into the bottom of her locker.

      She played right forward for the girls’ team. They’d lost a couple of their best attackers from last year, so this season it was going to be tough. Sam grabbed her parka off the hook and scanned over a few books. She had an English quiz tomorrow on a story by Tobias Wolfe, a chapter to skim on Vietnam. Since she’d gotten into Tufts, Early Decision 2 in January, she’d pretty much been coasting. Tonight a bunch of them were meeting in town at Thataways for wings and maybe sneak a beer.

      Senior slump was in full throttle.

      Outside, Sam ran over to her blue Acura SUV, which she’d parked in the west lot after lunch. She jumped in and tossed her bag onto the seat, and started up the engine. Then she plugged her iPod into the port and scrolled to her favorite tune.

      “And I am telling you I’m not going …,” she sang, belting it out as closely as she could to Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. She went to slip the Acura into drive.

      That’s when the hand wrapped around her mouth and jerked her head back to the headrest.

      Samantha’s eyes peeled back and she tried to let out a muffled scream.

      “Don’t make a sound, Samantha,” a voice from behind her said.

      Oh my God! That scared her even more, that the person knew her name. She felt a bolt of fear race down her spine, her eyes darting around, straining to glance at him in the rearview mirror.

      “Uh-uh, Samantha.” The assailant redirected her face forward. “Don’t try to look at me. It’ll be better for you that way.”