The Girl From Home: A Thriller (13 page)

As it turns out, Natasha was not the only person on the East End with hopes of avoiding the traffic. It's bumper-to-bumper through Route 27, and the Long Island Expressway is even worse. A trip that would take less than three hours without traffic takes nearly five, all the while the rain pounding off the car. To make matters that much worse, Jonathan realized too late that he forgot his phone charger in East Hampton, so by the time they're on the LIE, he's out of juice.

A little before seven, Jonathan pulls the Bentley into the garage under their apartment building. Natasha had previously suggested that they go out to dinner, but it's raining even harder in the city, and that's enough to dissuade her from venturing outside again.

“Why don't we just order in from Mr. Chen's tonight?” Natasha says as they enter their lobby.

Jonathan doesn't answer. Instead he stops short, startled by the sight of Haresh Venagopul sitting in his lobby and staring intently into his phone.

“Haresh?” Jonathan says. “What's going on?”

“I'm sorry to bother you on a Sunday evening,” Haresh says in his deliberate way, “but there's something important I need to talk to you about. I tried calling, but couldn't get through.”

Something bad has happened, that's for sure. Haresh doesn't just show up unannounced on a Sunday night to impart good news.

Jonathan's kicking himself about his phone, and about the fact that he let Natasha listen to her music playlists. If he'd had the radio on, he might at least have some idea of what the hell has Haresh so spooked.

“Natasha, can you give me some time alone with Haresh?” he asks calmly. “I'll be up in a few minutes.”

Natasha has no interest in Jonathan's business, so she doesn't look the least bit concerned. “Sure,” she says. “I'm going to order dinner, though, so don't be too long.”

“It'll be ten minutes, at most.”

Haresh nods, telling Jonathan the estimate is accurate. As soon as Natasha starts toward the elevator, Jonathan and Haresh go in the other direction, leaving the building to distance themselves from the doorman's oversight.

They take cover under the small awning of a non-doorman building, which is not nearly wide enough to keep them dry. The teeming rain sounds like a march, and Jonathan looks to his number two to explain why they're getting soaked.

“So I gather you haven't heard,” Haresh says.

“No. I've been on a news blackout the last four hours in the car. My cell was dead. What's up?”

“Your cell's not the only thing that's dead. So is Alexeyev.” Haresh says this as grimly as if the Russian president were a member of his family. “The news is spotty. Some reports are that he died of natural causes, but others are suggesting that he was assassinated. Either way, the hard-liners seem to be using it to grab power. It's two o'clock Monday morning in Moscow, and the reports are that the MICEX isn't going to open.”

“Fuck,” Jonathan spits out.

“Yes. To put it mildly.”

Jonathan's mind turns to fantasy savior scenarios—the news is wrong and Alexeyev is alive. Or his successor is chosen quickly and the markets open tomorrow as scheduled . . . but he knows better than to voice any of this. No matter what actually unfolds, it's going to be days, and much more likely weeks or even months, before the situation is stable. And for money wizards like Jonathan, instability is often just as bad as the worst-case scenario.

“So what do you propose we do?” Jonathan asks.

“Nothing,” Haresh says. “The ruble is going to plummet, and all we can do is hang on for dear life.”

*  *  *

As soon as Jonathan enters his apartment, he rushes to the desktop computer and pulls up his personal account at Harper Sawyer.

The firm's rules require that employees maintain all of their brokerage accounts under Harper Sawyer's control. The stated reason is so that the firm can monitor any insider-trading activity. Jonathan, however, has long believed it was really so they could squeeze people like him in situations like this.

He's got $7.3 million in his brokerage account. It's managed by a guy Jonathan's never met other than over the phone, who invests it according to Harper Sawyer's standard guidelines. Another $8.4 million is in unvested Harper Sawyer stock, the part of his compensation each year that the firm holds hostage to keep him from leaving.

On top of that, his ownership percentage of the fund is worth ten million, at least it was when Alexeyev was alive. But Harper Sawyer won't let him pull any of it out of the fund until the fund's termination date—five years from now.

His checking account is at Citibank, and that's outside of Harper Sawyer's reach, at least without their first obtaining a court order. But transfers to Citibank in excess of twenty thousand dollars in any thirty-day period need to be approved. Which means that while on paper he's worth more than twenty-five million, twenty thousand is likely all he'll have to his name when everything hits the fan.

He's just finished inputting the transfer when Natasha enters the study.

“I didn't even hear you come in,” she says. “What did Haresh want?”

“The Russian president died while we were stuck in traffic on the LIE.”

“Is that bad for the fund?”

Jonathan recognizes the opportunity the question presents. A chance to come clean. To share with his wife what's been going on and bring her in as an ally in the fight that's surely to come.

He decides to go the other way.

“No . . . the fund's hedged just for that reason. So when something like this happens, we're fine. Haresh was just concerned that investors would be jittery and he wanted to nail down some talking points.”

Jonathan has now firmly boxed himself in. He'll be alone in what happens next, and he'll have to continue to lie to keep Natasha in the dark.

Although every aspect of his life is up in the air right now, the one thing he is certain about is that he's made the right decision not to confide in his wife. He also knows that it's about as damning a statement he can make about his marriage.

*  *  *

The next morning, as Jonathan is in the elevator going up to his office, he's thinking about the scene in
Wall Street
where Charlie Sheen is arrested. The way he walks in and everyone looks away, and then he asks his friend, the guy who was later on
Scrubs
, “Someone die?” and his buddy answers, “Yeah.”

Jonathan steps off on the eighth floor expecting the worst, but Rita, the receptionist, says, “Hello, Jonathan,” just like she does every day. Everything seems status quo on the trading floor, too, the usual buzz of activity afoot.

“Morning, Jonathan,” Haresh says as Jonathan walks by his cubicle. “Crazy about the Russian market, right?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan says, not quite sure what to make of the off-handed comment.

Jonathan types his password into the computer. He fully expects to be locked out, but the screens indicating the fund's current trading position and value come right up.

As Haresh said would occur, trading has been halted on the MICEX, and the Russian Central Bank had announced it would hike interest rates to prop the ruble. Despite this, the currency had still fallen more than twenty-five percent against the dollar. The European markets are down across the board, as was the New York Stock Exchange, and oil and gold, the normal hedges against economic collapse, were trending up.

The fund's stated net asset value was down nine percent. This naturally prompted the usual frantic calls from the fund's most nervous investors. Norm Solomon predictably was having a fit, and he'd already left three messages. Jonathan couldn't care less. The next redemption period wasn't until December. As far as Jonathan was concerned, that was a lifetime from now.

Of course, neither Norm Solomon nor anyone else knew how dire the situation actually was. The net asset value was meaningless because it was based on mismarked positions—a hedge that did not exist. To cover Michael Ross's redemption, Jonathan had removed the position that protected against the ruble's decline, but on the books it still existed. As a result, the net asset value reflected the ruble's decline and also the offsetting gains of the hedge—gains that actually didn't exist other than on paper.

In point of fact, more than half of the fund—somewhere around twenty billion dollars—was now gone.

I need to see you.

Jackie's text comes four days after their cassoulet date. Jonathan called her (texted, actually) the next day, and they met the following afternoon for a repeat performance, this time without any pretense that they'd be sharing a meal. The day after that, yesterday, was the same. Jackie's invitation means that today will be their fourth rendezvous.

When?

Now!

Jonathan assumed that
now
still meant he had ten minutes, so he jumped into the shower. It turned out that she must have been close by when she texted, because as soon as he steps out of the shower, he hears a knock on the front door. He grabs his father's fraying bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door, and jogs downstairs.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I hope you weren't waiting too long.”

“No, I just got here. But I owe you an apology. Seems like I pulled you out of a shower. Is there anything I can do to make amends? Anything at all?” she says with mock innocence.

“Oh, I don't know. It was a pretty great shower, but if you follow me, I'm sure we can figure something out together.”

Jonathan takes her by the hand and leads her upstairs, back into his bedroom. It's almost surreal to him. Twenty-five years ago it was his greatest teenage fantasy that Jacqueline Lawson would be making her way to his bedroom—with the blue wall paneling and ABA basketball globe light.

It reminds him that not only does he want what he wants, but he gets it, too.

*  *  *

After, as they lay quietly bathed in sweat, Jonathan's cell phone rings. He reaches over and sees that it's his sister calling.

“I've called you three times,” Amy says.

He'd heard the phone ring, but of course didn't know it was Amy. Not that it would have mattered—the calls had come in while he and Jackie were in the throes, so he wouldn't have answered the phone even if it was God on the line.

“Sorry. I was . . . What's up?”

“I just got a call from the hospital. Dad took some type of turn. They said he's stable, but they moved him to the ICU.”

Amy sounds controlled, as always, but Jonathan can hear the fear in her voice. It reminds him of the time he convinced her to ride the roller coaster at Great Adventure with him, when he asked her whether she was scared and she said no, even though she was white as a ghost.

“What happened?”

“I don't know, exactly. Something about his blood pressure dropping. I asked if this was the beginning of the end or whether he'd recover. They said . . . you know, what doctors say. Could be, but maybe not.”

“Why'd they call you? I'm at Lakeview every day.”

A stupid question. They called Amy because she checked their father into Lakeview, so she listed herself as his emergency contact.

“I don't know, Jonathan. They must have my number in the file. Look, you're going to need to talk to a doctor face-to-face to get a straight answer about what's going on.”

Jonathan recalls getting the phone call from his mother in which she informed him that she had only six months to live. At the time, he thought she was being melodramatic. She was about to embark on chemotherapy, which he knew they didn't do when there was no hope of remission. In the end, it turned out she had been off by only a few months.

He considers that Amy's call, like his mother's, is the beginning of the end. How long to the end, though? A year? Six months? Weeks? Could it be days?

Jonathan places the phone on his night table and considers that he's not ready for his father to die. The irony isn't lost on him that he's had years to forge a relationship with his old man, and now when the clock is running down, he feels that he doesn't have enough time.

“Everything okay?” Jackie asks, even though she heard enough of Jonathan's side of the phone call to know the answer.

“They transferred my father to the ICU. That was my sister, Amy. I should get over to Lakeview and see what's going on, I think.”

“Do you want company?”

Jonathan knows that Jackie's offer isn't sincere. Actually, that's not right. He assumes that there's nothing Jackie would like more than to hold his hand as he sits beside his father's bed. But she can't. Not without risking her husband's wrath.

“Thank you, but I'll be okay,” he says. “Just knowing you offered means a lot, though. So, thank you.”

*  *  *

The nurse stationed at the ICU explains to Jonathan that before he's permitted entry to see his father, he's required to wash his hands thoroughly and put on a paper cap, like the kind fast-food employees wear, and a disposable hospital gown. After Jonathan does as directed, he finds his father sleeping in the fourth bed of a row, the one closest to the window.

William Caine doesn't look much different than he had any of the other times Jonathan had come across him during his stay here at Lakeview, except that now he sleeps with wires connecting him to a monitor and a breathing tube under his nose.

The other beds are all filled. Their occupants are also connected to tubes and appear lifeless. Beside each of the beds is a chair, but it's not like the big recliner that his father's room has downstairs. These are unpadded. The ICU obviously doesn't encourage long visits.

“Hi, Dad,” Jonathan says.

For a moment Jonathan waits, hoping for a smile, or maybe a wink, like would occur if this were a movie. His father doesn't stir, however.