Swimming with Sharks

June 6, 2000—LMI

The glass door to Alex’s office flew open, and Mark stormed in. He had a concerned look on his face.

“Hello, Mark.” Alex looked up from her documents. “What’s up?”

He closed the door behind him.

“Did you take a look at the price of PBA Steel today?”

“Yes, this morning.” She looked at her usually calm employee in surprise. “It was at seventeen and a half.”

“Two minutes ago it was twenty-six and three-quarters.”

“Pardon me?” She turned toward her monitors and pulled up the ticker. In disbelief, she stared at the quote for PBA Steel—which had already risen by another dollar.

“That’s impossible!”

She quickly ran this information through her mind. Her client Blue Steel, the largest independent steel company on the East Coast, had just offered last week to take over the ailing but long-established Pittsburgh steel mill for 21.8336 dollars per share on her advice. And all of this was still unknown by the public. PBA Steel’s management was hesitant and wanted to ask its shareholders whether they would agree to the takeover by Blue Steel. Even for market professionals, nothing indicated that such a takeover offer was imminent because PBA was far from bankrupt and still valued as a solid and stable company.

On the other hand, Blue Steel was sitting on above-average profits generated by its new management and looking for investment opportunities to avoid taxes from eating into those earnings. For this reason, Alex had scoured the market and come across PBA Steel. All in all, it was intended to be an unspectacular and rather average deal. The telephone rang, and she picked it up with an uneasy feeling. It was Marty Freeman, the president of Blue Steel.

“Alex, have you looked at PBA lately?” he yelled into the telephone. “Was what you suggested to us some kind of joke? We offer twenty-one dollars per share, and now it’s racing toward thirty! How can it be that a stock priced below twenty dollars for years suddenly takes off like this?”

“I don’t know either, Marty,” Alex said, trying to calm him. “I’ve been following PBA for weeks, and I looked back over the years. There were minimal price fluctuations of a few cents here and there. My calculations were perfectly in order.”

“Let me tell you something,” Freeman said, lowering his voice a few decibels, “someone got wind of this deal! We’re not interested in a takeover if we have to pay fifty dollars per share. You know as well as I do that this scrap heap isn’t worth that much!”

Their conversation went back and forth like this for a while as the stock price kept rising. It was already clear that PBA Steel was overvalued, and the SEC would invariably initiate an investigation—at the very latest after Blue Steel’s public announcement of its takeover bid.

“That son of a bitch!” Alex cursed after Freeman hung up. “Now he’s going too far!”

“Do you think that Zack is behind this?” Mark raised his eyebrows, and Alex nodded grimly. After keeping the Maxxam deal secret from Zack and demonstrating to him that she was in the know about him, she had continued to cooperate on trivial things. Neither of them had uttered a word about the incident at Luna Luna, but their relationship had been cool and purely professional since then.

“Mark,” Alex said, thinking rapidly, “if it was Zack, we need to find out right now. I don’t care how you do it, but I want to know. Preferably before the close of the market.”

“And what if it really is him? Then what?” Mark asked.

“Then I’ll teach him a lesson that he won’t soon forget,” Alex answered. Mark left, and she followed him across the trading floor. At this time of the day, the traders had their hands full. Phones were ringing; there were hollers, wild gestures, and waves. Some traders had a phone to each ear and another in hand. Alex threw a glance at the LED ticker at the front of the large trading floor, constantly updating the quoted values of NYSE-listed stocks. Marty Freeman must have taken her for a fool! Her thoughts were racing. On her way out the sliding glass door, which led from the trading floor to the hallway, she nearly collided with Zack.

“Oh, hello, Alex,” he said, grinning in an overly friendly way. “How’s business?”

“Excellent.” She forced an equally phony smile. She knew he hated her since her magnificent success with Maxxam. But was he really so dumb as to use confidential information in such a blatantly obvious way? Or was he trying to trip her up? Insider trading was a serious violation. She swore to herself she’d only give him information one last time. But this one would be unforgettable.

“Can I buy you lunch?” Zack asked.

“Sorry, I’m busy. Maybe some other time.”

“Well”—he casually threw his Armani jacket over his shoulder and turned away to leave—“good luck.”

She watched him disappear in to the elevator. It was about time for her to stop this cat-and-mouse game. Levy had to notice that she had become suspicious. Depending on his reaction, she could determine whether he was a part of this, or if Zack was working for himself.

Alex went back to her office. After a moment, she dialed Max Rudensky’s number and waited impatiently for him to pick up. Max had been a broker for many years in London and New York. After exchanging the usual courtesies, she cut straight to the point. She asked if he had heard anything about PBA Steel in the market. It wasn’t unusual for her to ask him for advice, and in the past he had pointed out one or another good deal to her. But since seeing him at Sergio’s party, she had realized that the deals he recommended were exclusively with companies in which the dubious SeViCo held shares. If she was really right about this, then Max would inform Zack about her call in no time. Or maybe even Sergio. This thought was far scarier. Up to now, she had still hoped that Sergio wasn’t involved in any of this.

Just as Alex expected, Rudensky pretended to be clueless, but she didn’t much care anyway. She was only interested in whether he would call Zack. While she waited for Mark to come back, she stared at her desk in a morbid mood. The PBA Steel deal had gone down the drain. An hour later, Mark returned and let himself sink into a chair, out of breath.

“Most of the stock purchases were made by a firm called Manhattan Portfolio Management,” he reported. “Rudensky has been buying like crazy. None of our traders knows where the other purchases are coming from.”

Alex nodded. She had expected Rudensky’s involvement in this buying spree, but who was Manhattan Portfolio Management? She had heard this name before, but where?

“What are we going to do now?” Mark wanted to know. At that moment, Alex remembered. Manhattan Portfolio Management. Jack Lang. Sergio’s birthday party! Zack had talked about offshore companies with him!

“We need to find out who’s behind this MPM,” she said with determination. “Zack knows this firm pretty well. I’m sure of it. But how can we find out?”

“We could try the commercial register,” Mark suggested.

“That’s a good idea.” Alex sat upright and smiled grimly. “I’ll let you take care of it, Mark. In the meantime I’ll prepare a nice little trap.”

She had a great idea to teach Zack a painful lesson.

When the market closed, PBA Steel had reached an all-time high at thirty-two dollars per share. Whoever had tried to push up the price acted exceptionally imprudently because PBA Steel was obviously the topic of the day. Alex dialed Zack’s extension, and he answered immediately.

“Did you see PBA?” she asked innocently. “Unbelievable what happened there, right?”

“Yes, indeed,” he answered, as slippery as an eel, “and all of this on the day after you told me that something could be in it for us with PBA.”

“I have to admit I suspected that you were behind this rise in the stock price,” Alex said and laughed. Zack joined in her laughter after a few seconds, but it sounded forced.

“In that case, we suspected each other.”

“Nonsense,” she countered, “what interest should we have in the stock price skyrocketing like this? The deal is dead, and the people at Blue Steel are pretty pissed off.”

She waited for Zack’s reaction.

“Vince won’t be pleased if this deal falls through.”

“Well, tough luck,” Alex replied. “My calculations were based on twenty-one dollars per share. But it’s not all that bad. Because I have something else in the works.”

“Really? What is it?” Zack couldn’t hide his curiosity.

“Hey, not so fast! I’m still working on it. It could be as big as the Maxxam deal, if not bigger.”

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“I’ll tell you about it soon enough. I’m still in the initial talks. But this could turn out to be a sensation.”

“Come on, don’t torture me like that!”

Alex grinned. She could vividly imagine Zack sliding back and forth in his chair with dollar signs in his eyes.

“Okay,” she said, “my prospective client is looking for opportunities to increase their share capital. They’ve made many large investments recently and are strained for cash as a result, but they still want to acquire a well-known company. I had the idea of creating a limited partnership and launching a fund that invests in promising start-ups. It’s risky, but the returns could be gigantic. I also thought about high-yield bonds. Oh, I’m already revealing way too much.”

“Sounds very interesting. You’re a smart girl. How about having dinner with me tonight?”

Bastard, Alex thought. Everything that she’d just told Zack was a product of her imagination. There was no new client. She had laid the bait, and now she just had to wait for Zack to take it. Alex sensed a tingling excitement rising in her. She was a skillful strategist, with a hunter’s instinct. Certainly she wouldn’t let anyone force her into the role of the hunted. It was five thirty when Mark returned in an excited mood.

“Did you find anything?” Alex asked.

“Of course.” He grinned mysteriously. “I have a friend who works in public administration. She looked up everything that I needed to know.”

He rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a copy of the articles of incorporation. Alex didn’t want to know how he’d managed to get it, but the fact that he did proved how capable he was.

“The managing director of Manhattan Portfolio Management is a certain Jackson Patrick Lang, residing on Leroy Street in the West Village,” he said. “And now hold on to your seat, Alex.”

She looked at Mark expectantly.

“Manhattan Portfolio Management—abbreviated MPM—belongs to Venture Capital SeaStarFriends Limited Partnership.”

“That’s impossible,” Alex said, shaking her head. “Some US citizen must be registered.”

“No, not according to applicable law. I talked to a lawyer who specializes in corporate law, and he confirmed it.” Mark excitedly leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Do you understand what this means? We found a connection to LMI! Funds launched in-house were invested in an offshore company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands called SeaStarFriends! Do you remember?”

Alex stared at him, speechless.

“Of course I do,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Now we only have to find out who’s behind SeaStarFriends,” Mark said, “and then we know whether Zack acts on his own account or on the orders of Vince Levy.”

He turned around as if expecting Zack to appear behind him.

“It’s quite obvious already,” he whispered. “LMI wouldn’t launch a fund with capital of five hundred million dollars to invest in a third-party venture-capital company. They want the money to stay in-house, after all.”

“Of course.”

Thousands of questions flooded Alex’s brain. It was impossible to find detailed information about a company incorporated in an offshore location because there were no mandatory disclosures or accounting rules so long as the company only did business with other companies outside that location.

“Well, there’s someone who’s a real expert when it comes to offshore companies,” Mark said, hesitating. Alex sighed.

“I know him too,” she answered, “but I doubt that he’ll help you once he finds out that I’m involved.”

“Oliver is my friend,” Mark said. “He can only say no.”

She didn’t feel comfortable asking Oliver Skerritt for a favor, but in the end her curiosity prevailed. She wanted to know who was making illegal money through her deals. The telephone rang.

“Answer it, Mark,” she said quickly. “If it’s Zack, tell him I just left.”

It was Zack. Alex smiled bitterly. The fish was still carefully but greedily circling the bait. She scribbled some notes on a piece of paper that Zack wouldn’t be able to miss when snooping around her office. Without a doubt, he had called just to see whether she was still there. He would wait a little longer and then come over to search her desk.

Have fun, Mr. St. John, Alex thought, stepping into the elevator with Mark. I hope you burn your fingers on this one!

Alex spent the next day in Baltimore trying to appease the management of Blue Steel. The PBA stock price had leveled off again at around eighteen and a half. This was probably due to her phone call to Rudensky, who had told his clients that she had pricked up her ears. So as not to ruin the deal completely, they had let go of their positions and the market calmed down.

Alex was completely exhausted when she arrived at her apartment that evening. She opened a bottle of Coors and walked out on the terrace. She called Mark on her cell phone in case Sergio had the land line tapped.

Time had passed since that incident with Sergio, and things had cooled off between them. She’d been extremely busy with work, and so had he.

Mark picked up after the second ring. Zack hadn’t been seen in his department or on the trading floor that day. Furthermore, Mark hadn’t been able to reach Oliver—who was still in Europe and wouldn’t be back in the city until the beginning of July.

Alex sincerely hoped that Zack was behind this all by himself. He surely had the means to pull off such an operation. He had many friends and informers in the world of big finance. On top of that, she knew that there were no limits to Zack’s greed for cash and his craving for recognition. But would he really risk betraying Levy, as well as Sergio?

The ringing of the telephone interrupted into her thoughts. The clock showed a few minutes after eleven. Just before the answering machine clicked on, Alex answered.

“Hello, cara.” It was Sergio, as if he knew that she was thinking about him. “How are you?”

“Not so good,” she replied. “I had a terrible day. I’ve probably lost a deal that I thought was wrapped up.”

“What kind of deal?” he asked. Was he pretending, or did he really not know about it? Alex realized that she didn’t trust him at all anymore.

“Blue Steel and PBA Steel,” she said. “Everything was all worked out, and I even told Levy about it. But yesterday, the price of PBA more than doubled in no time. I was in Baltimore all day, but I didn’t know what else to tell these Blue Steel people. And on top of it, I’m afraid that the SEC will get involved. It looks like we tried to drive up the price in order to earn higher fees!”

“Don’t worry about the SEC.”

Alex straightened up in her chair.

“What do you mean? The SEC has initiated investigations on much less before.”

“I mean it just like I said. Forget the SEC.”

Forget the SEC! She would have loved to ask him directly about SeaStarFriends, but his involvement in MPM was just speculation at this point. Sergio wasn’t a banker, but he knew enough about business to fear the Securities and Exchange Commission, which monitored the trading of all securities. Especially if he knew that MPM and LMI were trading on insider information. Was his carelessness an indication of his naiveté or the exact opposite? Since her conversation with Nick Kostidis on Christmas at the Downeys’ house, she’d thought about him many times. To her annoyance, she realized that she was listening for revealing undertones in every one of Sergio’s words. She hadn’t seen Kostidis since then, but she still owed her nagging guilty conscience to him—which she could have done without. She was relieved that Sergio was still in Chicago. When he said good-bye after fifteen minutes and said he’d get in touch when he was back in the city, it sounded almost like a threat.

Sergio had been in Las Vegas for the past three days and was extremely satisfied with the deal he had finally closed after long and tenacious negotiations. In addition to the Gold Nugget, the Pyramid, and the Southern Cross, he now also owned the fourth-largest luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip: the Venice. The negotiations had been tough, but Angelo Canaletti—the last offspring of the once important Canaletti family from New York, which had relocated to the West in the 1960s—lacked any sense for business. He had gotten too comfortable with his excessive lifestyle. He’d run the gold mine of the Meridian, with its six hundred beds and enormous casino, completely into the ground with his disastrous management. He was in deep because he owed millions of dollars to the IRS. This purchase was a bargain for Sergio; it just required some patience. After finishing the contract, he finally cemented his position of dominance in Las Vegas. Profits from the casinos were sizable and crisis-proof sources of income.

However, his meeting in Vegas with Jorge Alvarez Ortega had been much more important. Ortega had become the undisputed number one of the powerful Colombian drug cartel in Medellín after the violent death of Emilio Arqueros a few months prior. The negotiations with Ortega concerned the import of cocaine to the US. Due to Sergio’s newly consolidated influence at the Brooklyn port, he was the only person who could guarantee Ortega a risk-free import of drugs from Colombia. The old routes via Florida or Mexico were too risky, and many couriers had been busted. But Sergio’s people knew how to smuggle illegal drugs directly into New York in front of the customs agents and the police without any problems.

Sergio demanded thirty percent of the revenues for his services; Ortega only offered him fifteen. The negotiations with the Colombian dragged on through the entire night and seriously put Sergio’s patience to the test. They wined and dined like kings, and Franco Cavalese—Sergio’s man in Vegas—brought in the prettiest girls in town. With a mixture of contempt and amusement, Sergio watched the eyes of this South American peasant Ortega pop when he saw them. At three in the morning, the man disappeared into his suite with three very young blondes.

He and Sergio hadn’t come an inch closer in their negotiations. Sergio left the hotel at three thirty in the morning and had a limousine take him to the airport. He didn’t need to wait for this peasant! If Ortega wanted something from him, he would have to come to New York. To show that Sergio was serious about his thirty percent share, he would blow cover on the next delivery from Colombia.

When he arrived in Chicago, Sergio had received a message from Levy that St. John’s reckless behavior threatened to trigger an investigation by the SEC against LMI and MPM. It was a bad situation, but Sergio had managed to control the damage with a few phone calls.

The fact that Alex now seemed suspicious was far more serious to him. Zack had Jack Lang from MPM and Rudensky go overboard buying the stock of a company that LMI intended to represent in a takeover. Zack usually acted on his knowledge more prudently, but this time he had made a mistake. Sergio urgently needed to speak to Alex and check whether she had noticed anything. After their conversation, he was overcome with a wild longing for her. She had never mentioned another word about his uncontrolled violation of last October and behaved normally toward him. Sergio was sure that she had forgiven him for his faux pas.

Despite Nelson’s warning on Cinnamon Island, Sergio kept thinking about getting divorced from Constanzia. His biggest wish was to have Alex at his side day and night. His surveillance and monitoring of her telephone calls and e-mails turned up nothing. Alex went to work, came home, and met him occasionally. If Alex went out, then it was to after-work parties with her colleagues or a visit to the Downeys—with whom she’d spent a weekend on Long Island. There was no other man in her life besides him. Sergio poured himself a whiskey and contemplated whether he should skip his appointment in the morning. He longed for Alex with every fiber of his being, and at the same time he was mad at himself for being so obsessed with her. His anger at Ortega and St. John had caused him unbearable tension, and he desperately needed to let off some steam. After a third whiskey, he ordered a call girl to his room. The girl was young, blonde, and gorgeous, but Sergio suddenly thought about Alex. And although the little whore gave it her best effort, Sergio was horrified to realize that he couldn’t get it up. Feeling terribly humiliated, he angrily sent the girl away. At that moment, he hated Alex with all his heart. She was to blame for his failure. She had jinxed him.

On Tuesday, June 14, 2000, US Customs caught a very big fish at the Brooklyn port. The customs agents had received an anonymous tip early in the morning to take a closer look at the Panamanian freighter Cabo de la Nao, which was coming from Costa Rica with a cargo of coffee beans. Sure enough, they found more than two hundred kilos of pure cocaine with a street value of several million dollars. The drugs, originating from Colombia, were sealed in plastic bags hidden in the coffee. The captain and the crew of the Cabo de la Nao were arrested on the spot and taken away for questioning; the entire shipment was seized. Time and again, customs and drug enforcement agents seized narcotics at the city’s port or airports, but usually they only found a few grams or kilos. This discovery was surely one of the biggest in United States history.

Naturally, every news channel focused on coverage of the cocaine bust in Brooklyn. Mayor Kostidis proudly announced this significant blow to organized crime in New York. Sergio laughed disdainfully and turned away from the television.

“Excellent,” he said to Massimo, Nelson, Luca, and Silvio, who were all watching the news with him at his apartment on Park Avenue, “this will force Ortega to give in.”

“Or there will be war,” Nelson said.

“Ortega can’t afford that. He needs our connections at the port in order to bring such large shipments into the country. And he’s certainly dependent on the North American market.” Sergio shook his head and once again watched the mayor’s grim face on the screen. “This idiot really believes that his cops pulled this off all by themselves.”

“Maybe you should talk to Ortega again,” Nelson said. “Now he’ll—”

“Nelson!” Sergio looked at his friend in astonishment. “What’s going on with you? You don’t sound like the Nelson I know!”

“The idea of you starting a war with the Colombians makes me a little uneasy. They’re dangerous.”

“It sounds like you’re getting scared in your old age.” Sergio grinned.

“Call it what you want,” Nelson responded, “but I’m not interested in an armed conflict with these people.”

“It’ll be all right.” Sergio turned the television off impatiently and stood up. “Ortega will contact us. And then we’ll negotiate.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Ortega is a businessman, Nelson,” Sergio replied. “Going after us would claim too many victims and cost too much money.”

Thursday, June 16, 2000

At eight thirty, Alex turned the computer off and straightened up her desk. She was the last one in the building besides the guards on duty. She and Mark still hadn’t uncovered any more information about the mysterious partnership called SeaStarFriends. The price of PBA had stabilized after the SEC got involved. But it was strange that the investigation had been called off after just two days. All of the events surrounding PBA were more than mysterious, but the deal with Blue Steel would go through in the coming weeks. Alex was just about to leave her office when the external line rang. She hesitated briefly, but then she picked up the phone.

“Alex Sontheim,” she answered.

“Hello, Alex, I was still hoping to reach you at the office.” The voice was unmistakable.

“Hello, Nick.” She sat down again. “You’re lucky. I was just about to leave. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” the mayor replied. “How’s business?”

“I can’t complain.”

Why was he calling her? How did he get her extension?

“I just heard that you declined your invitation to the awards ceremony for the outstanding citizens of our city,” Kostidis said. “I wanted to find out why.”

Alex had received a letter from the mayor’s office a few weeks ago, informing her that the City of New York wanted to honor her for her courageous rescue of Madeleine last year. Together with other extraordinary citizens, she was to be honored during a ceremony at city hall. Alex couldn’t attend, so she had her secretary call to send her regrets.

“Don’t tell me that you personally call everyone who cancels,” she answered quizzically.

“No,” he said with a laugh. “Definitely not. But then again, very few people ever cancel.”

“I believe that.” Her voice sounded sarcastic. “Most people love to see their name in the newspaper.”

“Maybe,” the mayor countered, “but they deserve it. All of the people who will be honored have accomplished something outstanding.”

“Listen, Nick.” Alex realized that this was turning into an unpleasant conversation. “I’d love to come, but I need to fly to Houston that day. I’m sorry.”

“Then there’s nothing that we can do about it,” Kostidis replied. “What a shame. But the reason that I was actually calling…”

Alex felt herself getting defensive.

“I’d like to invite you to a dinner at Gracie Mansion on July fifteenth,” he said to her surprise. “You’ll obviously also receive a written invitation. My wife and I would be delighted if you could come.”

“Thanks, but what have I done to deserve this honor?”

Kostidis didn’t let Alex lead him astray with her sarcasm.

“It’s a reception for the Canadian ambassador,” he said calmly. “We always like to invite interesting people to such occasions. The Downeys will also be there, and my wife suggested that I invite you. Mary is very impressed with you.”

Alex almost thought she could hear him smiling. Was he making fun of her? He had entirely different motives for inviting her, and it seemed just a flimsy excuse that this was his wife’s idea.

“I assume that this invitation is just for me.”

“Of course you can bring a guest,” Kostidis replied smoothly. Alex couldn’t help it, but this man simply provoked her to react in a sarcastic way.

“I’ll check my schedule to see if I’m free that day,” she answered coolly.

“Great. By the way, have you thought about our conversation?”

Aha. He’d finally gotten to the topic he wanted to talk about from the very start. This was certainly also the reason for his call.

“No,” she said, “I haven’t had time the past few months.”

This was a lie. She’d been thinking about it incessantly.

“Too bad.”

“Nick”—Alex lowered her voice even though she really wanted to scream—“I don’t like to think that someone is trying to use me. I’m truly sorry, but if you’ve got problems, please contact the FBI or the CIA. I can’t help you.”

“I’m sorry if you think I’m trying to use you. That wasn’t my intention.” He paused briefly. “Have you heard about the narcotics bust at the Brooklyn port?”

“Yes.” Alex was surprised about the sudden shift of the topic. “That’s all people are talking about right now. What does it have to do with me?”

“FBI experts believe,” Kostidis said, “that there will be an armed conflict between the Colombian drug cartel and the New York crime syndicates very soon.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He was silent for a moment.

“Because I’m afraid that Mr. Vitali is involved.”

Alex shivered.

“I want to prevent anything bad from happening to you, Alex.”

“You’re really trying by all means possible,” Alex replied in a frosty tone. “I appreciate your concern, but as I’ve assured you before, I’m in no way involved with Mr. Vitali’s business.”

Nick sighed. “All right then. Will you accept our invitation?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Alex’s heart felt like it was about to burst when she hung up the phone. Why couldn’t Kostidis just leave her alone!

Saturday, June 18, 2000

The doorbell rang. Soon afterward, the key turned in the lock and Sergio entered the apartment.

“Alex?” he called. “I’m here!”

“I’ll be right there!” she yelled from the bathroom. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her long, dark-blonde hair was bleached and cut to chin-length. She hoped that Sergio would dislike it as much as the skin-tight, silver Missoni dress that was far too flashy for his old-fashioned tastes. Alex couldn’t stand him anymore. The constant effort to disguise her feelings was nerve-racking, She had been postponing an important decision that she made weeks ago. Today she would end this relationship that had turned into true torture for her. She took a deep breath before she left the bathroom.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi,” he replied, and his gaze slid from her hair down to the silver strap sandals and back up. He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t smile, but kissed her cheek.

“What have you done to your hair?”

“I was at the hairstylist.” Alex no longer felt that familiar pounding of her heart at the sight of him. “Can we go now?”

They rode the elevator down without saying a word. Luca was waiting in the lobby, and Alex nodded at him briefly.

“Since when do you need bodyguards when you go out with me?” she asked. Sergio’s face turned grim for a moment.

“So no one can steal you, cara,” he replied airily.

His limousine was waiting in front of the building with its engine running. Then Alex remembered Kostidis’s words about the narcotics bust at the port. I’m afraid that Mr. Vitali is involved in this…No, that couldn’t be. Sergio seemed as relaxed as ever, not exactly like someone who was expecting an armed conflict with South American drug dealers. Fifteen minutes later, the limousine stopped in front of Le Bernardin on Fifty-First Street. The owner of the posh French restaurant—whom Sergio called Jean—greeted them effusively. He escorted them to a table in a corner of the restaurant. Admiring looks followed Alex throughout the entire restaurant, and she registered that Sergio also noticed.

“Maybe your dress is a little too revealing for dinner,” he said quietly. “Don’t you think?”

“The other guests seem to like it. Don’t you?”

“It fills me with jealousy when other men stare at you like that.”

“Really?” She smiled disdainfully. “I thought you were above all that.”

Sergio was absolved from answering her by the appearance of the head chef. Throughout the dinner, Sergio tried hard to be as entertaining as ever. Alex realized that his charm was bouncing off her, and she had to force herself not to look at the clock. She wanted to tell him what she had to say and get out of there as quickly as possible.

“What’s wrong with you, cara?” Sergio asked after dessert was served. “Why are you being so standoffish? You could be a little friendlier after such an exquisite meal.”

She looked at him pensively.

“I wanted to wait until we finished dinner,” she said, “to tell you that I’ve made a decision.”

“Aha.” He smiled, unruffled, but an attentive expression appeared in his eyes. “What decision is that?”

“Since the incident last year,” Alex said, “I have come to realize that our relationship is lacking something very important. You don’t love me. You think of me as your property that you can use as you please. You don’t respect me.”

Sergio said nothing but just observed her carefully with his incredibly blue eyes.

“That evening,” she continued, “when you raped me, I realized what kind of a person you really are.”

“And what kind of person is that?” He managed to smile.

“You’re an egoist. The only person who matters to you is Sergio Vitali, and no one else.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Cara,” he said as he leaned toward her and put his hand on hers, “in all my life I have never desired a woman as much as I desire you.”

“And?”

“And?” He looked at her with an irritated expression. “What do you mean?”

“You desire my body,” she answered, “but I expect more from a relationship than just sex. I’m almost thirty-seven years old, and I don’t want to be just the sex kitten of a man who doesn’t give a damn about my feelings.”

“What do you expect from me?” The look in his eyes was hard to read. Was it insecurity? Or was it simply anger that he couldn’t escape this conversation?

“Nothing,” Alex said, shrugging her shoulders. “I don’t expect anything from you. There will never be anything more than sex between us. You’ll never accept me as an equal partner or a person you can trust. For a while I assumed it was because of me, but that’s not the case. You simply don’t want more from a woman than what you’re getting from me. That’s not enough for me in the long term.”

Sergio was silent for a moment. His face was expressionless.

“I won’t allow you to leave me,” he said and then let go of her hand.

“What are you going to do? Force me to sleep with you with a gun to my head?”

He didn’t react to this remark.

“Tell me what I can do to change your mind.”

“Nothing. It’s too late.”

“I can’t accept this.”

“You shouldn’t have lied to me,” Alex said. “You keep lying to me. Why aren’t we going out alone tonight? Why the limousine and the bodyguards eyeing anyone who walks into the restaurant?”

She exhaled with a deep sigh and shook her head.

“I was ready to love you, Sergio. If you’d been honest with me, I would have accepted the truth, no matter how bad it might be.”

She realized from the expression in his eyes that she’d hit a sore spot.

“My wife has never asked me to tell her about my business in all our thirty years together,” he said stiffly. “Why can’t we just leave it as it is?”

“I told you why.” She finished her drink. “I want to go home now.”

Sergio swallowed. Under no circumstances did he want to lose Alex. She meant more to him than any other woman had in the past. Maybe he should cast Nelson’s warnings aside and tell her the truth about himself. He would be invincible with her by his side, because Alex had all the traits that his son Massimo lacked. She was an excellent and cold-blooded tactician, and she was prudent despite her willingness to take risks. But how would she react to the truth? What if she suddenly had scruples? Then she would be a risk, and he would have no choice but to eliminate her. Women were difficult to gauge, especially Alex. Sergio needed time to think. The soundest approach seemed to be putting their relationship on hold, but the moment that he thought this, he felt an unbearably painful longing. Just the thought of another man touching her drove him crazy.

“Let’s talk about this another time,” he finally said, using all of his strength to force himself to smile. “I need to think about all this.”

“Agreed.”

It was a quarter past midnight when they left Le Bernardin. Luca and another man had been waiting in the lobby all night and moved outside as they saw Alex approaching. Sergio fell back for a quick conversation with the restaurant’s owner. The weather was cool for June, and it was drizzling lightly. Sergio turned up his trench coat collar as he stepped outside.

“Where’s the limousine?” he snarled indignantly at Luca.

“He had to drive around the block first,” he replied. Alex felt chilly as she stood next to Sergio, and she raised her head when she heard screeching tires. An old brown Ford switched lanes at high speed and raced directly toward them. She noticed that the windows were down despite the rain. She remembered Kostidis’s warning words, and instantly her brain starting churning through fragments of information. She instinctively felt danger emanating from that brown car.

“Sergio!” she screamed. “Watch out.”

Warned by her scream, Sergio quickly turned around. Flashes from a submachine gun came from the car’s interior. Alex heard the dry barking of the gunfire and felt a hard blow to her back as Luca pushed her to the ground. She heard the bullets pierce the car’s sheet metal, and the restaurant’s glass door burst into thousands of glass splinters; ricocheting bullets ripped through the air. This scene only lasted for a few seconds, but as it unfolded in front of her eyes, it seemed as if in slow motion. Then the nightmare was over. After a rev of the engine, the car raced away toward Rockefeller Center. The passersby who were still out on the streets at this late hour were screaming in panic. Cars stopped and honked their horns. Alex freed herself from Luca’s grip and jumped up. Sergio and the other man were crouched behind a parked car that was now riddled with bullet holes.

“Cara,” he said, extending his arm toward her, “did anything happen to you?”

“N…n…no.” She was in shock and could hardly speak. “You?”

“I’m okay,” he assured her. As he lifted himself up his face looked pale, but he remained as calm and composed as ever. A curious crowd gathered but kept a respectful distance. The restaurant’s owner came out—white as a sheet from the shock—with some of the guests who had also heard the shots.

“Mr. Vitali!” the owner of the restaurant yelled. “Should I call the police? Or an ambulance?”

“No, no, never mind, Jean.” Sergio patted the dirt off his coat with his right hand. “Everything’s all right.”

“Someone was shooting at you!” Alex’s voice trembled hysterically. Only now did she feel the panic rising inside of her. The car had long since vanished in Midtown Manhattan’s busy nighttime traffic.

“Everything’s all right,” Sergio repeated. He walked over to the limousine that had stopped at the roadside. Alex slowly realized how close she had come to death. This wasn’t a movie, but real life! The owners of the damaged vehicles argued angrily, and someone called the police.

“You’ve got to call the police, Sergio!” Alex’s voice sounded shrill. She was trembling in fear. “Someone tried to kill you!”

“No, I don’t,” Sergio replied without looking at her. “Like I said, nothing happened. Come on, get in.”

Alex opened her mouth to object, but Luca—who had just saved her life—pushed her into the limousine. The door was hardly closed when the driver hit the pedal. Alex felt her heartbeat racing. She felt by turns hot and cold. She still couldn’t completely grasp what had just happened. In the dim light inside the limousine, she stared numbly at her hand. She touched Sergio’s shoulder. It was covered in blood. Sergio took off his coat and jacket with his face contorted in pain. Alex was horrified when she saw the rapidly expanding red patch of blood on his shirt.

“My God, you’re injured!” she whispered. “You’ve been hit!”

“Armando, make her a drink,” Sergio ordered and unbuttoned his shirt. “How about you guys? Are you okay?”

“Yep,” Luca and Armando answered. Wide-eyed and silent with fear and horror, Alex stared at the men until her gaze stopped at Sergio. He had a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt.

“Why are you wearing that thing?” she whispered, but slowly her mind started to make sense of it. Everything Kostidis had told her on the telephone was true.

“Sergio!” she said again, but he didn’t react at all.

“Have a drink, cara,” he replied. Armando pressed a glass filled with whiskey into her hand. “That’ll make you feel better.”

Alex obediently downed the whiskey, and her trembling subsided.

Armando pulled out dressing materials from a first-aid kit, and Luca set about bandaging Sergio’s intensely bleeding shoulder. They spoke quietly in Italian, and then Luca opened the glass partition and ordered the driver to head to a certain address in Brooklyn. Alex was in a state of shock. She hadn’t noticed that the limousine was rolling over the brightly lit Brooklyn Bridge.

Luca made two quick calls on his cell phone. Sergio’s eyes were closed, and he pressed his hand on the bandage, which was turning red beneath his fingers. The sight of blood usually didn’t bother her, but this was something entirely different.

“Sergio.” Alex leaned forward, trying to subdue the trembling in her voice. “Who were they? Who was shooting at you?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He opened his eyes and gave her a flat smile. “This is just a little scratch.”

“You could be dead now!”

“Yes. But you warned me in time.”

Alex said nothing. The car turned onto a deserted street. Alex could see elongated warehouses and the light of Manhattan on the other side of the river.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Someone will take you home now.” Sergio avoided answering her directly as usual and grabbed her hand. “You saved my life, cara. Thank you.”

The car stopped.

“What are you doing here? Why don’t you go to a hospital?” Alex was too confused to grasp what was happening. Armando opened the door, and Sergio clumsily got out. Although it was raining harder now and the air was cool, he had beads of sweat on his forehead.

Some cars approached through the rain with their headlights turned off; a few men got out. The rain moved sideways through the light of the lamp above the entrance. No one paid any attention to Alex, and so she followed them into the warehouse. Pressing herself to the wall of the small office, she recognized Sergio’s son Massimo and Nelson van Mieren.

More cars arrived outside. Alex heard the sound of car doors slamming. Serious-looking men with determined, grim faces entered the warehouse and talked quietly amongst themselves in Italian. She could feel their tentative looks and saw that all the men were armed to the teeth. Up to now, the Mafia was no more than an abstract term with a negative connotation for Alex—and now she was right in the middle of it. She winced when Massimo suddenly addressed her.

“Dario will take you to the city now,” he said.

“Can I see him for a moment?”

Massimo gave her a searching stare, and then he nodded. She followed him through a room in which files were stacked up to the ceiling on shaky shelves. Why did they bring Sergio here and not to his apartment or a hospital? Massimo knocked on the door. When it opened, he whispered something in Italian to Nelson van Mieren. Nelson shot Alex a repulsed look.

Sergio lay on a narrow bed. His upper body was exposed, and an older man was examining his shoulder.

“The bullet is still inside,” he said, wiping his bloody fingers on a towel. “I’m afraid that an artery has been ruptured.”

“We’re taking you to Dr. Sutton, Sergio,” Nelson said. “I’ve already called him. You’re safe at his clinic.”

Safe? From what? From another attempt on his life? Alex’s knees started trembling. Kostidis had warned her. Now there could be no excuses, no sugarcoating, no doubts about Sergio’s involvement with the criminal underworld. Just a half hour ago, she’d witnessed an assassination attempt that only barely failed. Nearly fifty heavily armed men were standing outside. The thought that she was at the Mafia’s New York headquarters seemed almost grotesque.

“Okay,” Sergio said, his face contorted in pain, “where’s Natale? He should—”

Van Mieren made a gesture with his hand, and Sergio fell silent.

His eyes landed on Alex, who stood at the wall next to a filing shelf as if paralyzed, looking at him fearfully.

“Cara.” Sergio extended his right hand, smiling with difficulty. “Come over here.”

She walked toward him hesitantly and took his hand, which was unusually cold. His eyes had a feverish gleam. He was sweating even though it wasn’t particularly warm. He was obviously weak, but he still had full control of the situation.

“I’m very sorry that you had to witness this,” he said with a grimace, “but you wanted to know why I had bodyguards escorting us tonight.”

Alex was speechless for a moment, and then her fear turned into furious anger. She pulled her hand away.

“You were expecting something like this to happen,” she whispered, “but you didn’t consider it necessary to tell me. I’m so unimportant to you that you carelessly put my life at risk!”

“I’m sorry.”

Alex clenched her hands into a fist. She felt like punching his expressionless face.

“Go to hell, Sergio,” she hissed.

She turned away before he could respond. The faster she could leave this dark warehouse, these sinister characters, this entire nightmare behind, the better.

Marvin Finnegan was playing cards with a few colleagues when an emergency call came in to the Forty-First Precinct in Morrisania in the South Bronx. It was around one in the morning, a relatively quiet night, and the officers who weren’t on patrol killed time by playing cards. The area around the Forty-First Precinct was one of New York’s most run-down neighborhoods, far removed from Manhattan’s sparkling skyscrapers, the luxury boutiques on Fifth Avenue, and the Upper East Side’s posh apartment buildings. The city’s administrators rarely ventured to the South Bronx. Too few disillusioned and corrupt police officers barely maintained order here. Drugs were nothing unusual in the South Bronx. People living in the projects were embittered or had given up a long time ago. Most families had at least someone who was hooked on the needle. Many men boozed away the few dollars that they received from welfare. Violent family disputes were common in these tiny apartments, which sometimes housed more than ten people. The misery and neglect were depressing. The hideous apartment buildings were decaying because no one cared about maintaining them. Sometimes they burned down. Mountains of rubble were everywhere, and so were the prostitutes and hustlers at Hunts Point, the drug dealers, and the juvenile delinquents.

Most of the police officers were just as frustrated as the neighborhood’s inhabitants. If they couldn’t get out on sick leave or transfer to another precinct, then they took bribes from drug dealers and squeezed store owners for protection money.

Marvin Finnegan had been a police officer in one of New York’s most miserable neighborhoods for sixteen years. He was born and raised here, and had only left the South Bronx to serve in the army and later attend the police academy. He was a tough but fair cop, and his name had long ago become a legend because he was incorruptible, determined to protect honest people from criminals.

“Hey, Marvin!” Patrick Peters, the lieutenant on duty, stuck his head inside the recreation room. “A woman from an apartment at the corner of Flatbush and Sound View Avenue just called. That gang showed up again. I sent over Hank and Freddie.”

Finnegan put down his hand with a hint of regret. He had a full house, but that was tough luck.

Tom Ganelli, who had been Finnegan’s partner for three years, grinned in excitement.

“Pat,” Finnegan said, slipping into his jacket, “try to reach Valentine and Burns. I want them to come, but without the siren. We’ll end the game these bastards are playing.”

The patrol car stopped on a side street close to the apartment building just ten minutes later. The building was on one of those half-empty, dilapidated blocks, where working-class families lived alongside junkie squatters. Finnegan and Ganelli could hear screams and the sound of shattering glass from a distance as they approached. They scurried to the rear of the building in the shadow of the crumbling walls, while taking care not to stumble over rubble and garbage. They passed a burned-out car. Finnegan pulled out his gun. The past few weeks had seen an unusual accumulation of these nightly raids on dilapidated apartment buildings. Two buildings had been set on fire and burned to the ground because the fire hydrants in the vicinity had been intentionally blocked.

It was quite obvious to the men of the Forty-First Precinct that there was a coordinated effort underway to empty these buildings. After the tenants gave up and moved out due to the constant terror and fear, heavy machinery with wrecking balls moved in and razed the building to the ground. Property was scarce in New York City. New developments with expensive condos or offices would be built here eventually. This neighborhood would be cleaned up someday, and unscrupulous real-estate speculators, who bought these properties cheap, would make a killing. The poor people would be pushed to more run-down areas. The police officers coordinated their actions by radio and surrounded the building in a circle.

“How many, and where are they?” Finnegan wanted to know.

“They’re inside the building,” his colleague replied from the other side. “I think five or six.”

They slowly approached the building.

“It smells like gasoline here,” Ganelli said quietly. “They want to burn this shack down.”

The glow of a fire lit up the night just at that moment. Windows were flung open, and people screamed in desperation.

“Call the fire department,” Finnegan said, turning his radio on. “Everybody else move!”

Just as they approached the building, the arsonists tried to escape through the busted front door.

“Police!” Finnegan roared, charging ahead with his weapon pulled. “Freeze!”

Ganelli flared up a bright spotlight and aimed it at the men. The thugs were blinded for a second and stopped; then one of them pulled a gun.

“Get down!” Finnegan screamed, ducking. Not a second too late, because someone started firing in all directions. Finnegan aimed his .357 Magnum and pulled the trigger. A moment’s remorse or the slightest hesitation could be deadly in this situation. He heard a stifled cry behind him, and then the spotlight went out. The other officers charged the five thugs, who now stood there like well-behaved choir boys.

“Tommy?” Finnegan leaned over his partner in concern. “Hey, Tommy!”

“I think I got hit,” the young man whispered and moaned.

“Shit!” Finnegan raised himself up. “We need an ambulance! Tommy’s been hit!”

Two police officers rushed over. In the light of Mendoza’s flashlight, Finnegan saw that Ganelli had caught a bullet in his stomach. He’d forgotten to put on his bulletproof vest in the rush to the scene.

“God damn it,” he cursed, patting his partner’s face in desperation. “Hang in there, Tommy! You better hang in there! We’re taking you to the hospital, kid. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Ganelli smiled slightly. The sirens of the fire trucks were already approaching in the distance. Curious bystanders appeared. Biting smoke came through the broken windows of the building’s basement. The officers forced the five men against a building covered with graffiti, their legs spread. They searched them for weapons before handcuffing them. Jimmy Soames leaned over the man who Finnegan had shot.

“This one doesn’t need an ambulance anymore,” he remarked, putting his weapon back into his holster. “He’s stone dead.”

Finnegan squatted on the ground next to his injured partner in the drizzling rain that soaked his uniform. Blood was tricking out of the corner of Ganelli’s mouth, and his eyes became increasingly glassy. He suspected that the twenty-eight-year-old man would die.

When they returned to the precinct, the news that a policeman had been shot was already making the rounds. There was an unusual frenzy of activity in the police station for this time of night. Hordes of reporters flocked like moths to light when they heard some guys were arrested in the South Bronx during an operation to forcibly evict tenants. An officer, Lieutenant O’Malley, stepped into Finnegan’s path.

“You won’t believe it,” he said, “but one of those thugs is the son of Vitali, that real-estate tycoon from Manhattan.”

“Oh really?” Finnegan grinned coldly. “That’s the icing on the cake.”

He pushed impatiently through the waiting press crowd without addressing any of their questions. In the basement near the holding cells, he ran into Patrick Peters.

“What happened to Tommy is terrible,” he said to Finnegan compassionately. “They took him to Fordham.”

“At least one of those bastards bit the dust.”

“Yes,” Peters nodded, “I heard. Shot to the head.”

“But it was too late. He’d already shot Tommy.”

Peters gave Finnegan a sympathetic look and then patted him on the shoulder.

“I think it would be better if you call it a day now, Marv.”

“No, I’m not leaving until I see what happens with Tommy,” Finnegan objected. “I’m all right, Pat.”

Peters nodded. “It seems that you caught a big fish. We might actually be able to get to one of the guys pulling the strings.”

“I already heard. Vitali’s son,” Finnegan replied.

“You should inform the mayor. That’ll interest him.”

“I believe that’s Captain Tremell’s decision,” Peters said. “He’s on his way here.”

Finnegan put his jacket on the coat rack and walked over to the holding cells where the five arrested men were locked up. Lieutenant Peters walked upstairs to the police station to report the details to Captain Tremell, the commanding officer of the Forty-First Precinct.

“Where’s Vitali Junior?” Finnegan asked the officer on duty. The latter briefly looked at his colleague’s determined face and nodded toward the door directly across from his desk. “I’m getting myself a cup of coffee,” he said.

Cesare Vitali looked at the three officers across the interrogation room with a taunting sneer, intending to appear self-confident. But Finnegan saw the fear in his dark eyes. Just one look was enough to tell him that this guy was high. He obviously didn’t smoke crack or shoot heroin like the poor kids; he snorted coke. Mendoza and Soames positioned themselves in front of the door.

“I want to make a phone call!” the young man demanded.

“Not now,” Finnegan countered calmly.

“I have the right to make a phone call.”

“You have bullshit.”

Finnegan hated these greasy wops, these spoiled rich kids with their expensive leather jackets, shiny gel in their hair, and flashy cars, who came to this part of town to cause trouble.

“Hey, cop. I want to call my lawyer,” Cesare Vitali said and leaned back casually.

Finnegan also hated being called cop.

“Get up when I’m speaking to you, you stupid spaghetti jerk-off.” Cesare looked over to the other two officers, and then he grinned.

“Kiss my ass, cop.”

This was exactly what Finnegan was waiting for. With one quick step, he stood in front of the kid and grabbed him by his jacket. The fact that this little arrogant bastard had shot Tommy enraged him. Finnegan slapped him so hard that he fell to the ground.

“What did you just say?” he asked in a friendly voice. He calmly pulled out his baton and smacked it into his palm.

“When my father finds out how you’re treating me in here, your days as a cop are over,” Cesare said with naked fear his eyes.

“I’m shaking now,” he said loudly, his eyes widening as he pretended to be afraid. “I want to know what you were doing in my neighborhood, you little wop rat!”

“I won’t say a word without my lawyer.” Cesare crossed his arms with a defiant expression on his face. With a quick swing of his arm, Finnegan bashed the baton on the boy’s shoulder. Cesare cried out, writhing in pain. Finnegan kept hitting him until he whimpered and begged for mercy.

“Rat,” he said calmly, “you better spit it out now. Otherwise, it’ll be unpleasant for you.”

Tears ran down Cesare’s face. His self-confidence seemed swept away.

“Look who’s crying now!” Finnegan taunted him. “Are you a girl or something?”

Fury flared in Cesare’s eyes for a moment, but his fear was building.

“I’m not saying a word. You’re in big trouble now.”

“What for, if I may ask?” Finnegan’s voice was smooth as silk.

“You hit me!”

“What?” Finnegan turned to his colleagues and they just grinned. “He claims that I’ve hit him! Jimmy, Freddie—what do you say about that?”

“Do you know what the dudes Marv has beaten look like?” Mendoza grinned. Cesare looked at him stunned, but then he understood. These cops weren’t witnesses on his side. His cocaine high had gone away in one swoop. No one would believe him that a police officer had abused him. In front of a jury, he wouldn’t have much credibility as a criminal who was caught in the act. Threatening him with his father was also completely pointless. Cesare knew that his father would explode with anger when he found out he’d been arrested. He had screwed it all up once again. He’d let himself get caught, but this time he was really in deep shit. He’d end up in jail, and his father would show no interest in helping him.

“You goddamn wops shot my partner,” Finnegan said in a cold voice. “We don’t like people who shoot at us.”

He rolled up his sleeves, and Cesare looked around in panic. There was no way out. The other two cops at the door turned their backs on him.

“Are you going to open your fucking mouth now,” Finnegan hissed, “or are you one of those Mafia scumbags who choose to die instead of saying anything?”

His baton bashed down, and Cesare felt his nose breaking and lips busting. He was in the worst nightmare of his life; he was in such a panic that he pissed his pants.

“I don’t know!” he whined. “Please! I really don’t know anything!”

“Funny, I still have a feeling that you’re lying to me. I hate it when people lie to me.”

The blows rained down on him again. They hit him everywhere, and Cesare could taste blood. He could hardly speak anymore, and he spit out a tooth. Finnegan raised his baton again.

“No! Please, no more! I’ll tell you everything I know!” Cesare hid his face under his arms.

“There you go,” Finnegan said with a grin. “You could’ve had it much easier. So, go ahead and tell me.”

Dr. Martin Sutton’s private clinic was located a few miles outside Southampton on Long Island; its expansive grounds were surrounded by head-high hedgerows. Dr. Sutton had been a world-renowned surgeon when he worked at the famous Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. A scandal resulting from a patient’s death during a high-risk abortion had ended his career. Only his good political connections prevented him from being barred from the National Medical Association and losing his medical license. He bought a mansion on Long Island and converted it into a private clinic where he made a name for himself as a cosmetic surgeon. The world’s most beautiful women were among his patients. They appreciated the clinic’s first-class reputation and its discretion.

Dr. Sutton had helped his old friend Sergio Vitali a few times before, stitching up wounded men shot in gunfights with the police or other gangs. Sutton never forgot what Vitali had done for him during the terrible abortion scandal. At a time when everyone had turned their backs on the once-celebrated star surgeon, Vitali stood by his side and pulled strings for him. Dr. Sutton owed it solely to this man that he could still practice medicine.

When Nelson van Mieren jolted the doctor out of his sleep at one in the morning, he immediately headed over to the clinic, not asking what had happened. If Vitali wanted to tell him, fine; if he didn’t, then Martin Sutton wouldn’t ask. He told the doctor on duty to prepare the operating room. According to van Mieren’s account, Vitali appeared to be badly wounded. It was two thirty when he arrived, and he had already lost a lot of blood. Sergio Vitali was as tough as coffin nails; not a single moan came out as Dr. Sutton examined the gunshot wound. The nurse prepared a blood transfusion while Sutton took an X-ray of Sergio’s shoulder.

“I need to operate immediately,” he decided.

“I have a very important meeting tomorrow morning,” Sergio said. His lips were dry as paper. He felt drowsy, powerless. At first, he didn’t think that the injury was that bad, but the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding. The freezing chill that had spread through his body was the worst thing.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Sutton shook his head. “The bullet has ruptured an artery. It’ll be a few days before you’re back on your feet again.”

“Blood pressure one twenty over sixty-five,” the nurse said.

“We start operating when the diastolic reaches eighty,” Sutton said, changing a bag of blood plasma. “Call Dr. Johnson. Tell him to prepare anesthesia for surgery.”

The nurse nodded and left the room. Dr. Sutton was concerned that the blood was seeping out through the shoulder wound almost as quickly as fresh blood was being infused. He couldn’t wait much longer. Vitali would bleed to death if he did. The anesthesiologist entered the room, and the two doctors worked together to prepare Sergio for the operation.

Nelson van Mieren called Massimo at the warehouse office in Brooklyn.

“You should let your mother know, Massimo,” the lawyer said, trying to disguise his concern. “It doesn’t look good.”

“Things were bad here, too,” Massimo countered. “Cesare was arrested in the Bronx after setting fire to a building with some of Silvio’s people.”

Van Mieren felt an chill come over him. What a disastrous day this was! He’d had a bad premonition after the incident at the port, but Sergio only mocked him when he voiced his fears. This time, his boss was wrong. Ortega had lashed out with a determined act of vengeance. It was clear to Nelson that the Colombian was behind this attempt on Sergio’s life. And to make matters worse, Cesare had been arrested! That was the last thing that they needed now. Nelson could already see the headlines.

Maybe Sergio is right and I’m really getting old, the lawyer thought wearily. I don’t have the nerve I had twenty years ago.

He longed for his house in the country, his wife, his children, and his grandchildren. What was he still doing here? After all, Sergio didn’t even listen to him anymore.

“I won’t call Mama just yet,” Massimo decided, “but you should go to the Bronx to get Cesare out before he risks his neck with careless talk.”

“They’ll set a very high bail,” Nelson reminded him.

“It doesn’t matter. Get moving right now, Nelson,” Massimo said. “I’ll send Silvio with enough money. Cesare needs to disappear before he does something even more foolish.”

“All right. I’ll leave Luca here.”

“How’s my father doing?”

“They’re operating right now. The bullet ruptured an artery. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“He’ll make it. Papa is tough.”

Nelson noticed that Massimo’s voice was similar to his father’s in these situations. He appeared to have everything under control. Still, as long as Sergio was out of action, nothing else should happen.

Nick Kostidis groped for the receiver, half asleep, when the phone rang at three in the morning. Very few people knew his private phone number, so he wasn’t really surprised to hear Frank’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Frank,” he said quietly, throwing a quick glance at a sleeping Mary, “you don’t rest, do you?”

“I do sometimes,” Frank Cohen replied. “But I’ve been working on the program for Moscow’s mayor.”

“What’s up?” Nick yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Who is it?” Mary asked in a drowsy voice.

“Captain Tremell from the Forty-First Precinct called me,” Frank reported. “It looks like they’ve arrested Vitali’s son during an illegal operation to evict tenants in the Bronx. One police officer was seriously injured.”

Nick was instantly wide awake.

“I thought this might interest you.”

Could this be the long-awaited opportunity to finally get to Vitali?

“When did this happen?” Nick asked, turning on the light.

“It seems as if the guys from the Forty-First wanted to make an example of him and his accomplices. This gang terrorizes people in the neighborhood and burns down buildings, and they’ve been after them for months.”

“I’m driving over there right away,” Nick said.

“Oh, Nick, one more thing,” Frank said. “All of the buildings that this gang targeted were in Morrisania and Hunts Point between Westchester Avenue and Boston Road. Does that ring a bell?”

“No, not at the moment.”

“Last year, this area was declared as a priority redevelopment project.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“If Vitali is behind the raids, then he was likely in the know about the redevelopment plans.”

Nick felt a sudden chill. The mole was at work again.

“What happened?” Mary squinted sleepily into the bright light. “Do you really need to go?”

“They’ve arrested Vitali’s son. This may be my chance to finally nail that guy.” Nick’s eyes were shining. Vitali was Nick’s obsession. Mary had hoped that this would stop when her husband quit his job as a US attorney, but no. It was Vitali over and over again. An indescribable feeling told her that a tragedy would occur one day because of this man.

“Don’t go!” she urged. “It’s not your job anymore!”

“Mary,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the bed, “I’ve been after this guy for almost twenty years, and every time when I almost had him, he walked away with a smirk. Tonight, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way!”

“I’m scared,” she said quietly.

“Honey,” he said as he stood up, “you don’t need to worry. I’ll be back in two hours.”

The prospect of getting to Vitali through his son electrified Nick. He remembered all the times he had slipped through his fingers: the wasted hours, days, and weeks that he and his people had spent building a criminal case against him for his dirty deeds, only to be thwarted. Strangely enough, he also thought about Alex Sontheim—the beautiful and hard-to-read woman who had been stuck in his mind since their first meeting at the Plaza. Nick got dressed quickly. Instead of a suit and tie, he slipped into a white T-shirt and pulled a leather jacket out of the closet. Feeling sad and worried, Mary watched as he sprinted down the stairs. Her heart tensed with fear. She wished, for probably the thousandth time that her husband was a simpler man, in a simpler job, working far away from this brutal and violent city. The moment the door closed behind him, she began to cry.

It was four a.m. when the car stopped at the fortress-like building of the Forty-First Precinct on Simpson Street. Reporters crowded in front of the building’s steps, holding umbrellas to ward off a steady drizzle. They immediately recognized the mayor despite his leather jacket and jeans. Flashbulbs flared and two camera flashes lit up the darkness of the night. The reporters charged Nick.

“Is it true that Sergio Vitali’s son has been arrested?”

“Do you know whether the injured officer is still alive?”

“What do you have to say about last night’s shooting of Vitali?”

“Do you think that this assassination attempt has anything to do with the drug bust at the port?”

Nick pushed himself through the crowd without saying a word. He took a deep breath when he entered the police station.

“What assassination attempt?” he hissed at Frank once they were safely behind closed doors.

“I don’t know either.” Frank shrugged his shoulders.

Captain Tremell, commanding officer of the Forty-First Precinct, approached them with a concerned expression. He was followed by Lucas Morgan, the deputy commissioner of the NYPD. Nick was astonished to see Morgan because he rarely ever left his office. In contrast to Jerome Harding, Morgan wasn’t a man of the streets. A true bureaucrat, who had risen in a persistent, unspectacular way, Morgan was waiting patiently to assume Harding’s job. Nick greeted both men.

“The press people are saying that Vitali was gunned down tonight,” he said. “Is that true?”

“There was a shootout on Fifty-First Street just after midnight,” Morgan confirmed, while the men walked into the captain’s office. “Local residents told us that nobody was injured. But CSI found bullets in the wall, and the entrance of a restaurant was destroyed. Eyewitnesses reported that submachine gun shots were fired from a moving vehicle targeting three men and a woman coming out of Le Bernardin.”

Three men and a woman! Alex! Nick was sure that Vitali had something to do with the drug bust in Brooklyn.

“And?” he asked.

“The men and the woman disappeared in a limousine. No one fitting their description was admitted with a gunshot wound to any of the city’s hospitals.” Morgan raised his shoulders. “We don’t know if it was actually Vitali. The owner of Le Bernardin wouldn’t confirm that Vitali was there for dinner.”

“Let me know if you find out anything new,” Nick said. He was relieved that Alex wasn’t injured, if it actually was her.

“Mr. de Lancie?”

Manhattan’s US attorney pressed the phone receiver between his shoulder and ear. He searched for his glasses and the light switch since he was still half asleep.

“Y…yes,” he cleared his throat. “Who’s calling?”

“This is Massimo Vitali.”

John de Lancie’s drowsiness vanished in an instant, and his heart started pounding.

“Listen, de Lancie,” Massimo Vitali said in a harsh voice, “my brother was arrested last night in the Bronx. I’d like to ask you to make sure that he’s released immediately.”

“I… um… why are you calling me?” John de Lancie didn’t appreciate Massimo’s tone. Furthermore, he was startled that someone besides Sergio Vitali knew about their secret agreement. Vitali was anything but his friend—especially after the Zuckerman affair last year. And de Lancie had only dealt with Sergio himself so far, which is why he preferred to play dumb. This call could actually be a trap.

“My father was shot an hour ago,” Massimo continued. “So I can hardly bother him with this. We need your help. My brother must not go to jail, do you understand?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m sure you have a lawyer who—”

“I know that you owe my father a favor,” Massimo interrupted him rudely. Apparently, he had no time to be polite. The wheels started turning in de Lancie’s brain. How could he possibly show up at the precinct in the middle of the night and release a man who had been arrested for perpetrating a crime? After all, his job was to do the opposite.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied and hung up. Less than thirty seconds later, the telephone rang again. It was one of the junior attorneys from de Lancie’s office confirming what Massimo just said. An apartment building had been raided. One police officer was wounded, and one of the gangsters was dead. Vitali’s son was among those arrested, and the Forty-First Precinct had requested someone from the US Attorney’s Office. John de Lancie found himself between a rock and a hard place. He was obliged to Vitali, but it would be extremely difficult for him to help in this situation without exposing himself. He’d promised Vitali his assistance, but he’d always pulled strings in the background. On the other hand, nothing much could happen to him. Most likely no one would notice yet another unsolved shooting in the South Bronx—such incidents were the order of the day. There was hardly a reporter who’d get up on a rainy night to wait for an arrest in the infamous Forty-First Precinct.

“I’ll go there myself,” he said to his staffer—who seemed astonished. “It’s better if I take care of this personally. The press is sensitive at the moment when it comes to Vitali, and we can’t afford any mistakes.”

Lieutenant Patrick Peters broke out in a cold sweat.

“I can’t do this,” he said quietly. “It’s impossible.”

“You’ll find a way.” Luca di Varese didn’t smile. “Here’s three grand. There’ll be more when it’s done.”

The police officer swallowed. Luca didn’t like this, but his boss’s order during their ride back from Brooklyn that day some weeks ago had been crystal clear. Vitali suspected Cesare would sing like a nightingale in jail out of fear and cowardice. The boss was willing to sacrifice his son to protect his business. This scenario had now come to pass. Sergio Vitali was too incapacitated to make a decision, so it fell to Luca to execute his order. Massimo, Silvio, and van Mieren mustn’t know about this. After a moment’s hesitation, Lieutenant Peters accepted the bundle of bills.

“You want him…dead, if I understood you correctly?” he whispered.

“That’s right.” Luca nodded, his face a mask. He turned around, left the parking lot of the Forty-First Precinct without anyone seeing him, and headed back to Long Island.

Captain Tremell reported on the previous night’s incidents.

“Vitali Junior spilled the beans,” he said in a low voice.

Nick couldn’t believe it.

“It seems that he was part of all this by coincidence,” Tremell continued. “These thugs raided and set fire to the building by the order of someone named Silvio Bacchiocchi. This guy Bacchiocchi is Vitali’s strongman; we’ve known this for a while. He’s got a few prior convictions, but small stuff; that’s why we’ve got him in our computer system.”

“Which means that there’s a connection to Vitali,” Nick stated. He had a hard time remaining calm.

“Well,” Lucas Morgan said, nodding slowly, “we already have a warrant for Bacchiocchi, and we’re going to ask him some questions. Vitali Junior gave us some information that Bacchiocchi needs to rebut, for starters.”

“And this kid revealed all of this just like that?” Nick asked in disbelief.

“No, not just like that.” Tremell coughed slightly in embarrassment. “My men are very upset. One of their colleagues was gunned down during the bust. They grilled Vitali pretty hard, and then he… hmm… came clean.”

“A forced confession,” Morgan cut in, “is useless in court.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Nick responded vehemently. “Most important, we have a connection to Vitali.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Captain,” the lieutenant on duty said. “Vitali’s lawyer is here demanding the kid be released on bail.”

“No bail’s been set yet,” Tremell replied. “He won’t be arraigned until tomorrow morning.”

“This guy is enraged, sir.” The lieutenant frowned. “He’s screaming that this is unlawful detention and coercion.”

“Tell him that we’re allowed to keep Vitali in custody for twenty-four hours. There’s reasonable suspicion of trespassing, arson, battery, armed resistance, and who the hell knows what else. He’s going to remain in his holding cell until he appears before the judge in the morning.”

“Okay, sir.” The lieutenant disappeared again.

“How the hell does the lawyer already know that we’ve arrested the kid?” Tremell was pissed off. “We’ve ordered a complete news blackout!”

“If the reporters already know about it…” Morgan said.

“Vitali’s reach extends even into the Forty-First Precinct,” Nick said and sighed. Someone had informed Cesare’s father—either one of the officers or even one of the police commissioners. The payees on Vitali’s list of friends were everywhere. Not only in the police department, but also at city hall.

Captain Tremell, Lucas Morgan, Nick, and Frank walked toward the booking room. They could hear excited voices from a distance. It was Vitali’s lawyer arguing with some officers, but the sergeant on duty wasn’t having it. Three officers stood at the door blocking the reporters from storming the building.

“I demand,” Vitali’s lawyer screamed, “to see my client immediately! He has the right to legal representation!”

Nick stopped.

“Hi, Nelson,” he said calmly. “Why are you so agitated?”

Van Mieren turned around quickly, staring at Nick in astonishment. But he quickly regained his composure.

“Ah, Mayor Kostidis!” he exclaimed. He had the sonorous voice of a defense lawyer projecting to the farthest corners of even the largest courtrooms. “I should have expected I’d find you here!”

Nick and van Mieren had faced off in the courtroom a few times before, and Nick had always gotten the short end of the stick. But tonight he felt strangely confident because van Mieren seemed unusually shaken. There was a look of panic in his eyes, and he seemed to have aged by many years since their last meeting. He had lost weight in his face, but not around the belly; he looked sick, and his suit hung loose around him.

“You’re here too, Nelson,” Nick replied, “despite the fact that a complete news blackout was ordered. I guess the bush drums are in good working order.”

“I demand to see my client,” van Mieren insisted, ignoring Nick’s remark.

There was renewed commotion at the door of the police station, and then a man appeared. Nick was surprised to recognize John de Lancie—the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

When he arrived in front of the police station, de Lancie instantly realized that he’d made a big mistake. A swarm of reporters huddled in front of the massive granite facade on Simpson Street. A flurry of flashbulbs went off as he pushed his way through the intrusive crowd, silent and grim. De Lancie’s anger mixed with cold fear when he saw the mayor—of all people—in the waiting room. He was still measured against the success of his predecessor, and he felt in this moment that he was a pale comparison. It was too late to sweep this incident under the rug, and he could hardly leave now. He had to somehow make the best out of this without raising the suspicions of that clever fox Kostidis. Never before had he felt such an impotent anger; never before had he broken out into such a fearful sweat. De Lancie didn’t care about Cesare Vitali at all, but he needed to focus in order to avoid a tactical mistake; the consequences could prove fatal. “What’s actually going on here?” he asked, irritated.

Nelson van Mieren repeated his complaint.

“You’re going to see your client soon enough,” de Lancie said, but he stared at Nick. There was anger in his eyes; Nick thought that he also detected a hint of insecurity.

“What are you doing here?” de Lancie asked in a harsh tone. “You want your old job back, or you’re just coincidentally in this neighborhood at this time of night?”

His voice was oozing animosity.

“Call it curiosity, or even personal interest.”

Nick wondered why the US attorney was so irritated by his presence.

“I don’t understand why the mayor, the deputy police commissioner, and the US attorney are called over here because a few hooligans tried to burn down a tenement in the South Bronx,” de Lancie sputtered. “What’s the big deal?”

“One police officer was seriously wounded, one person is dead, and there was significant property damage,” Tremell interjected. “Furthermore, I requested someone from the US Attorney’s Office, but not you specifically, sir.”

John de Lancie turned to face him. He opened his mouth for a sharp rebuttal, but when faced with Nick’s inquiring gaze, he chose to remain silent.

“Well,” he continued in a more subdued tone, “as far as I can tell we’re here because the son of someone who has much power and influence in this city has been arrested. I’m less concerned about the incident than damage control in the public eye.”

“Pardon me?” Nick thought that he misheard. “A police officer is fighting for his life in the hospital! What kind of damage are you trying to control?”

“My God, Nick.” Drops of sweat appeared on de Lancie’s forehead. “It’s not even clear yet whether this young man shot the officer. Just because his father is your enemy, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be accused of overreacting!”

Captain Tremell’s and Lucas Morgan’s jaws dropped in surprise. The nightly raids on apartment buildings where people’s lives were threatened could hardly be considered a trifle!

“Vitali’s not just my enemy,” Nick responded. “He’s an unscrupulous criminal. And I haven’t changed my opinion. I still believe that we need to put a stop to him if we want to establish a minimum level of safety and order in this city.”

Nick noticed de Lancie’s nervousness, saw the sweat on his forehead, and remembered his suspicion that Vitali had bought de Lancie. It was hard to believe, but seemed to be true. Vitali had sent the US attorney to make this issue disappear as fast as possible, and it probably would have worked if Kostidis hadn’t come running. De Lancie was grinding his teeth, and his face had an unhealthy ruddiness.

“I’d like to talk to the kid,” Nick said to Captain Tremell.

“No, you won’t.” De Lancie was vehement.

“And why not?”

“This is outside your jurisdiction!” De Lancie was sweating even more. The collar of his shirt was completely soaked through.

“I’m the mayor of this city,” Nick said, unmoved, giving his successor a piercing look. “I’m responsible for the security of my citizens. I want to ask this kid a few questions.”

The US attorney stared at Nick. His mind was spinning feverishly. He had to prevent the mayor from speaking to Cesare Vitali under all circumstances. De Lancie knew Kostidis all too well. He’d admired him in earlier days as a US attorney because hardly anyone else was as successful in the courtroom. He could slip into the role of thundering prosecutor or understanding friend, and his summations were famous and brilliant. He played every role that promised to lead him to success. He knew how to influence the jury and manipulate witnesses into making statements they never intended to make. The secrets behind his legendary success as an attorney were his knowledge of human nature, his ability to empathize with his counterparts, his perseverance, and his computer-like memory. De Lancie knew that Cesare Vitali would be completely defenseless against this man. He responded to Kostidis’s gaze with powerless anger, clenched his hands into fists, and opened them again.

“No one will talk to Mr. Vitali until he’s been presented before the judge.” Captain Tremell closed the discussion. “Not even the emperor of China!”

“I’m the chief federal law-enforcement officer for the Southern District of New York,” de Lancie insisted. “We’ve taken over the investigation in this case, and I demand to see this man right now!”

Captain Tremell exchanged looks with Lucas Morgan and then shrugged his shoulders. He led the men to the interrogation rooms.

“You will get out of here!” De Lancie pointed with his index finger at Kostidis. The latter looked at the US attorney for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders.

“Get me Mr. Vitali’s lawyer!” de Lancie snarled at the police officer standing at the door. “This man has a right to legal representation!”

Lucas Morgan wondered why de Lancie was acting so strangely. Furthermore, he seemed to be afraid of Kostidis—but why?

“Why is this taking so long?” De Lancie looked nervously at his watch, pacing the room with long strides.

“I need to wrap this up, too,” Nick said. “Fortunately, the kid already confessed to everything. It looks as though we have nearly enough evidence to take on Vitali.”

De Lancie turned around quickly. His Adam’s apple jumped up and down nervously, and rivers of sweat ran down his forehead. “You should be happy, John,” Nick said with feigned innocence. “I’ve been after Vitali for twenty years and never had such good evidence against him as you have today.”

“This isn’t your job anymore, Kostidis!” de Lancie hissed. “The work of the US Attorney’s Office is no longer any of your business!”

Nick turned around in the door frame.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said slowly, without letting de Lancie out of his sight, “which side you’re on.”

The US attorney was speechless as he stared at Nick. His nerves were about to explode. Nick walked over to Frank, who was waiting for him at the sergeant’s desk.

“Let’s go,” Nick said to him. “Vitali has already confessed anyway. He did so under pressure, but we know that these guys worked under the orders of Vitali’s henchman. So the connection is there.”

Frank stared at his boss.

“De Lancie is Vitali’s man,” Nick said in a low voice. “I had a hunch. He knows that I suspect him too. I stepped on his toes pretty badly. I’m afraid that now he won’t leave a stone unturned to discredit me in public.”

“Hmm.” Frank had a concerned expression on his face. At that moment, commotion broke out near the holding cells. Captain Tremell and two officers came running from the cell block with faces as white as sheets.

“Goddamn, shit!” The otherwise calm commanding officer of the Forty-First Precinct was beside himself. “Vitali hung himself in his cell!”

“What?” Nick and Frank asked as if speaking with one voice.

“Yes, goddamn it! They forgot to take away his belt! He hung himself from the heating pipe!”

De Lancie lunged out of the interrogation room, his bloodshot eyes bulging out of his face.

“What is this bullshit!” he roared. “Am I surrounded by idiots?”

The police doctor who just happened to be there at that time of night ran past them, followed by van Mieren and the other officers. De Lancie’s gaze fell on Nick.

“This suits your plans exactly!” he said spitefully.

“No, not at all,” Nick replied. “He would’ve been far more useful to us alive. Good night, John.”

“Go to hell!” de Lancie growled after the mayor. Despite his fear, he was secretly relieved that Cesare Vitali was dead. Now he only had to deal with a corpse instead of keeping a guilty criminal from going to the slammer.

“This stinks to high heaven,” Nick said as they walked up the stairs.

“De Lancie will try to cover up this whole thing,” Frank said. “If your suspicion that he’s Vitali’s man is correct, then he won’t let the truth come out under any circumstances.”

“Shit.” Nick stopped, contemplating this. “And we have no way of preventing it.”

“Yes, we do,” Frank replied. “They can’t cover it up if Cesare Vitali’s arrest and confession is covered in tomorrow’s newspaper.”

“Tomorrow’s newspapers are already printed.”

“Crews from NBC and NY-1 are waiting outside.”

Nick thought for a moment, and then he grinned.

“Okay. That’s how we do it. Come on, Frank.”

John de Lancie didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. When he entered the US Attorney’s Office building on St. Andrews Plaza behind the federal court on Foley Square at nine on Sunday morning, he felt absolutely exhausted. Shortly after the medical examiner determined Cesare Vitali’s death and issued the death certificate, de Lancie left the police station through the back exit. He had no desire to face the vultures from the press and was glad that he didn’t run into Kostidis again. It wasn’t Cesare Vitali who gave de Lancie stomach pains, but the fear that the mayor saw right through him. An agitated crowd bombarding him with questions was waiting outside his office, but he forced his way through indignantly.

“What’s going on here?” he asked his assistant irritably. “Why are all these people here?”

“But you were there last night,” the woman replied in surprise. “Didn’t you watch television this morning? Yesterday’s incident in the Bronx is the lead story on every channel!”

An uneasy feeling overcame de Lancie. He opened the door to his expansive, mahogany-paneled office. Autographed head shots of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and J. Edgar Hoover hung on its walls. De Lancie stared at the television screen, which stood on his bookshelf alongside his legal books. Almost instantly, Nick Kostidis appeared on the screen, standing on the steps of the Forty-First Precinct police station. That same second, de Lancie realized that he had made a grave mistake leaving the building through the back exit. He had ceded the stage to Kostidis without a fight, and the media-obsessed mayor naturally took advantage of it.

“As the mayor of this city, I’m responsible for the safety of its citizens,” Kostidis was saying. De Lancie felt a murderous rage, but it quickly gave way to a feeling of helplessness. “I cannot and will not allow ruthless criminals to terrorize law-abiding citizens in this way. This group of six young men attempted to set an apartment building on fire—a building in which many families live. One of them was shot by the police after he critically wounded an officer in the line of duty. The other five perpetrators were arrested.”

“Is it true that Sergio Vitali’s son is among them?” a young female reporter asked.

“Yes, that’s correct,” Kostidis replied. Standing there in the drizzling rain, unshaven in his leather jacket, he fit the image of a man who sacrificed himself for his constituents. De Lancie reluctantly acknowledged that Kostidis was anything but a bland politician. Time and again, Kostidis managed to turn even the most trivial incidents into media events. In contrast to his predecessors, the many other politicians who seemed artificial in front of a camera or microphone, Kostidis seemed completely authentic. His enemies cynically called him a gifted actor who was a better fit for Hollywood than New York. But they also had to admit that he was the most popular mayor since Fiorello LaGuardia.

“Is that why you’re here now, Mayor Kostidis?” one of the reporters asked. As usual, Kostidis didn’t shy away from telling the truth.

Or what he believes to be the truth, de Lancie thought bitterly.

“Yes, this is one of the reasons. We’ve had reason to believe that Mr. Vitali was involved in numerous recent raids on apartment buildings in the Bronx, and the participation by his son Cesare in last night’s events offers conclusive evidence. Cesare confessed that he and his accomplices acted under someone’s orders. Real-estate speculators keep trying to oust tenants from their homes in order to raze those buildings and repurpose the properties. This is pure terror, which I won’t tolerate in my city!”

Kostidis’s eyes sparked angrily.

“It is a well-known fact,” one of the reporters began, “that you and Mr. Vitali aren’t close friends—”

“This is nothing personal!” the mayor interrupted the journalist. “I fought vehemently against any type of crime during my tenure as US attorney, and the fight continues to this day. As mayor, I am responsible for the safety of the citizens of our city. It makes no difference if the son of Mr. Vitali or anyone else is involved.”

“US Attorney de Lancie is also here tonight. It seems as if this case is a political issue.”

“Without a doubt, this arrest has a heightened political profile due to the involvement of the son of such a well-known figure as Sergio Vitali,” Kostidis said plainly. “At the very least this could prove Vitali’s connection to illegal business, even if he continues to deny it publicly and invest large sums of money in protecting his image.”

He spoke with confidence and eloquence. His lively facial expressions and gestures said more than he expressed in words. He was careful not to communicate his suspicions directly, but the way he spoke allowed viewers to connect the dots.

“Besides, I believe that Mr. de Lancie shares my opinion that this case should not be handled any differently than that of any other perpetrator. A prominent name doesn’t protect a criminal from the full force of the law.”

De Lancie felt by turns hot and cold. That goddamned son of a bitch! If only lightning would strike him down. He couldn’t have possibly handled this in a more clever way. Kostidis was once again the public hero, the tireless fighter against crime. He had succeeded in portraying Vitali as a ruthless real-estate speculator without explicitly attacking him, and he didn’t even mention that Cesare Vitali was dead. Things had gone from bad to worse. De Lancie felt sick, and a stomach ulcer caused him stabbing pain.

“Isn’t this great news?” his assistant asked. “It looks like we finally caught hold of solid evidence against Vitali!”

For decades, Sergio Vitali had been considered the archenemy of the US Attorney’s Office, with mountains of files piled up in its basement.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than stand around here,” de Lancie snarled at her. His assistant threw him a surprised look. She’d assumed that her boss would be happy, but the exact opposite appeared to be the case.

“Get out of here!” De Lancie pressed his hand against his abdomen. After she closed the door behind her, he staggered over to his desk and sank into his chair. These goddamn stomach pains were going to tear him apart. The telephone rang. John de Lancie picked it up with a sigh.

“That’s your idea of help?” The sound of Massimo Vitali’s cold voice reverberated in his ear. “You were really great. The only thing I can say is that my father made a bad investment in you.”

“Listen!” de Lancie yelled. “I’m sorry. Kostidis was already there when I arrived. There was nothing I could do. I tried everything, but—”

“You screwed up,” Massimo Vitali interrupted him coolly. “I only hope that you know what you have to do now. There could be unpleasant consequences for you if you don’t at least control the damage you caused.”

“But—”

The line was dead. This arrogant bastard had just hung up on him! De Lancie buried his face in his hands. He understood the threat all too well. Once it became public knowledge that he’d accepted money from Vitali, he would be finished forever. He would have no choice but to put a revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger. What demon had possessed him—who had never before had any trouble with the law—to get involved with Sergio Vitali? He had risked everything he had worked so hard for.

He raised his head and stared into the mayor’s face on the screen. What could he even do with this situation? Kostidis made the headlines of the day, and as the US attorney, he could hardly side with a man who had been chased by his own agency for years. Above all, de Lancie couldn’t afford to raise any suspicions with his staff. He needed to play the role that everyone expected of him, whether he liked it or not—a role into which Nick Kostidis had forced him. Had the mayor really seen right through him last night? Sometimes I wonder which side you’re on…

How could he let his guard down in front of Kostidis, of all people! He was in a tight spot now. He had to help Vitali or he was finished. But this help mustn’t be too obvious. There had to be a way to save face and still do Vitali a favor. Vitali was not his biggest problem. It was Nick Kostidis—the mayor of New York.

Alex also had a sleepless night. She had been pacing the halls of her apartment ever since Sergio’s driver dropped her off at home. Her whole body trembled, and she only managed to calm down somewhat after three glasses of straight vodka. She wasn’t shocked by the gunshots fired in her direction from the moving car, but rather the crystal-clear realization that she had gotten herself into a situation she couldn’t get out of. If she went to Kostidis to tell him what he wanted to know, Sergio would find out and have her killed just as he did with David Zuckerman. Quitting her job and leaving the country seemed like the only solution. Maybe she could find a new job in Singapore or Japan, as far away as possible from Sergio and the menacing men she saw in that dark Brooklyn warehouse. But how could she move on knowing that Sergio was free and ordering others killed with impunity? Wasn’t it her civic duty to try and prevent this? She thought about Kostidis’s words on Christmas Day at the Downeys’ house. I had the impression that you would have the courage to do the right thing…

She flinched as she saw Nick Kostidis come onto the screen. He stood in front of a police station surrounded by reporters, and his dark eyes seemed to being looking directly at her. Pleading. Demanding. Compelling. This man was just as hard to read as Sergio. Alex didn’t trust him. There were so many secrets, and the truth behind these secrets seemed far more complex and dangerous than Alex had ever imagined. Alex was so lost in thought that she didn’t even hear what Kostidis was talking about. Now she turned up the volume. Sergio’s son Cesare had been arrested last night.

“We’ve suspected for a long time that Mr. Vitali was involved in the numerous raids on Bronx apartment buildings,” the mayor said, “and the participation by his son Cesare in last night’s events offers conclusive evidence.”

Alex groped for her pack of cigarettes. When she realized that it was empty, she crumpled it impatiently. One of the reporters asked Kostidis whether he believed that there was a connection between the assassination attempt on Vitali and the drug bust at the Brooklyn port.

“I was informed that Mr. Vitali was apparently involved in a shooting incident last night,” Kostidis said—it seemed to Alex that he was looking straight at her. “Eyewitnesses reported that someone shot at Vitali and his companions from a moving vehicle outside a restaurant on Fifty-First Street. However, we don’t know anything about the perpetrators or their motives. We don’t even know if Vitali was injured or if he is even alive.”

“Oh my God,” Alex murmured, wrapping her arms around her knees. If she hadn’t reacted so fast, Sergio would probably be dead now. Mayor Kostidis certainly wouldn’t be too sad about that.

Nelson and Massimo were waiting outside the clinic room door to speak with Sergio. Anxiety was etched across their faces.

“Doctor, when can I speak to my father?” Massimo asked Dr. Sutton.

“It’ll take a little more time,” the doctor said. “He needs plenty of rest after the operation and his extreme blood loss.”

“I can’t wait!” Massimo struggled to keep his voice down. “My brother killed himself last night. My father is the only person who can tell me what I should do now.”

“Martin,” Nelson van Mieren interjected, “the situation is really very serious.”

The doctor gave in, and Massimo opened the door of the clinic room, with Nelson in tow.

“Papa!” The young man stepped to Sergio’s bed; he was terrified when he saw how bad his father looked. The injury hadn’t looked that serious to him on Saturday night. Now, all the machines and tubes made Massimo even more nervous. Until yesterday he hadn’t the slightest idea what his father actually did all day, and was only vaguely familiar with the fatal consequences of one wrong decision. Massimo had been confident that it would be no big deal if his father were sidelined for a few days. But the events of the last forty-eight hours had proved the young man wrong. He felt like a listless sailor on a ship lost at sea with no captain. His younger brother’s arrest and sudden death had such broad implications that Massimo was frightened. There was public speculation connecting his father with the illegal eviction campaigns and the drug seizure at the port. The reporters were talking about an underworld war with the Colombian drug cartel, and Massimo didn’t know what to do. Three men who worked for his father were shot at the port last night. The situation was spinning out of control.

“Massimo,” Sergio said in a fragile voice.

“Yes, Papa, it’s me. How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Sergio replied. “Where’s Nelson?”

“I’m here!”

“You were right,” Sergio murmured. “Ortega didn’t hesitate long.”

The lawyer saw how bad Sergio’s condition actually was and hesitated to report on the new problems that had emerged.

“Massimo, did you tell your mother what happened?”

“Yes, I did. But…” He fell silent and quickly exchanged a look with Nelson.

“But what?” Sergio’s gaze wandered from Massimo to Nelson and back to his eldest son. He saw their gray faces and knew that something was wrong.

“What happened?” he asked in a flat voice.

“Cesare’s dead,” Massimo responded. He and Nelson took turns as they described what had transpired, beginning with Cesare’s arrest, the scene with Kostidis and de Lancie at the police station, Cesare’s suicide, the three men shot down at the port, and the wild media speculations.

Sergio was silent as they told him everything. He needed time to put the pieces together. For a moment, he was tempted to give in to the feeling of weakness inside him. Cesare didn’t commit suicide. There was no way that he would do that, he was too much of a coward. He was responsible for the boy’s death, because he’d given Luca the unmistakable order to ensure that Cesare never spilled the beans. How could he have known that this situation would actually arise? He had been annoyed with his youngest son many times; it was painful for him to accept that Cesare was a good-for-nothing. But despite everything, Cesare was his own flesh and blood—his son—and now he was dead.

“What should we do now, Papa?” Massimo asked, verging on desperation.

“Above all, you need to maintain your composure,” Sergio replied, “no matter what else happens. Take cover and wait. No rash actions. What about de Lancie? Is he still on our side?”

“I think so,” Massimo replied.

“But Kostidis is running wild,” Nelson remarked. “He senses his chance to finally get to you.”

“Yes, I can imagine that.” Sergio frowned in thought. He needed to reassert his control as quickly as possible before any irreversible damage was done.

“Does Constanzia already know about Cesare?”

“Yes,” Massimo nodded, “it’s all over the TV. Domenico’s with her. She completely collapsed. She says that…”

He stopped and looked down to the ground, ill at ease. Sergio knew that Constanzia had loved the youngest and weakest of their sons more than the other two. He could easily imagine what kind of scene was unfolding at his house.

“What does she say?” he asked harshly.

“She says,” Massimo inhaled deeply and struggled to look into his father’s eyes, “that you had him killed.”

Sergio’s fingers seized the bedcovers. Constanzia knew him better than he realized.

“That’s nonsense,” Nelson said. “Your father has been in this clinic since Saturday night!”

“Papa, I know that you never thought much of Cesare,” Massimo said, his voice pleading, “but I told Mama that you’d never do such a thing. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Papa?”

“Of course, I’ve done nothing of the sort.”

Massimo seemed relieved, but Nelson still had something on his mind.

“Before Cesare hung himself,” he said, “he told the cops that they raided the building on Silvio’s order. They arrested him yesterday.”

Sergio closed his eyes. Cesare really didn’t understand anything, not even the most important law that they lived by—the code of silence, omertà.

“They won’t be able to use his confession,” Nelson continued, “because it was made under coercion.”

“It’s too late now anyway,” Sergio answered in a rough voice. “Cesare’s dead and nothing will change that. We need to approach things differently.”

Thinking clearly was an incredible strain for him.

“Find someone to claim that he shot at me,” he said hoarsely, “and think about a plausible reason. We need to publicly announce that the shots fired at me have nothing to do with Ortega. Nelson, bail Silvio out of jail.”

He was exhausted, and he paused for a moment. The shadows under his eyes darkened, and his throat hurt from speaking. Sergio cursed the drugs that paralyzed his brain.

“Nelson,” he murmured, “think of something we can use to distract the press. We’ve already talked about a scenario, do you remember?”

The lawyer nodded. Dr. Sutton entered after knocking on the door.

“Gentlemen, I urge you,” he insisted, “Mr. Vitali really needs to rest now.”

“Nelson!” Sergio whispered, and the lawyer leaned over closer toward him. “Please call Alex. Tell her…”

I was ready to love you, Sergio. If you’d been honest with me, I would have accepted the truth, no matter how bad it might be.

He saw the rejection flare up in Nelson’s eyes. No, she shouldn’t see him this way, so weak and helpless, with all these tubes in his body.

“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head, “don’t call her. But please make sure that Domenico takes care of his mother. She mustn’t be left alone now.”

“I will.” Nelson pressed his friend’s hand with compassion. “We’ll get everything under control again. Don’t worry.”

The phones had been ringing off the hook at city hall since early morning. Nick Kostidis didn’t feel fatigued, even though he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep over the past few nights. Cesare Vitali’s arrest and suicide and the attempt on his father’s life were the top story in every news outlet—he had made sure of it. But Sergio Vitali had disappeared off the face of the earth. He was either dead or so severely injured that he couldn’t defend himself publicly, which was counter to Nick’s expectations. In any case, his late-night appearance on television in the Bronx prevented the matter from simply being swept under the rug. De Lancie was forced to investigate the case.

There was a knock at the door.

“Mr. Harding is here, sir,” Allie said. The police commissioner didn’t wait. He pushed the secretary aside and charged into the mayor’s office with a bright-red face.

“What the hell, Nick. Who do you think you are?” he screamed. “I’m out of town for two days, and then I hear something like this!”

He was so enraged that Nick thought for a moment he might assault him.

“What are you talking about, Jerome?” He pretended to be surprised.

“You’re not a damn US attorney anymore!” Harding roared. “How dare you interfere with a police investigation? How could you claim in front of running cameras that Vitali was gunned down by the Colombian drug cartel?”

“That’s not what I said—”

“Of course not!” Harding’s voice almost cracked in his rage. “You only insinuated it, but that’s bad enough! The governor called me. Even the secretary of state and the deputy attorney general from Washington want to know what’s going on here. I’m standing out in the rain like a complete idiot, and people are asking me why the mayor is doing my job.”

Nick suppressed a satisfied grin.

“Calm down, Jerome,” he said. “I haven’t done anything but point out some grievances in the Bronx. Wouldn’t you agree that these raids on apartment buildings—”

“Spare me your PR speech,” Harding interrupted him harshly. “You can’t fool me! You’re taking advantage of this situation to continue your crusade against Vitali. But you’re obstructing the police and obstructing justice in the process.”

“How is that?” Nick squinted at the police commissioner. “Because I prevented de Lancie from covering up this incident as quickly as possible?”

“That’s not your job anymore,” Harding replied vehemently. “Do you know what Vitali will do once he finds out that you’ve slandered him?”

Nick jumped up. “I don’t give a damn what he does. I represent my city’s interests, since nobody else cares to. The US attorney only cared about Cesare Vitali’s well-being on Saturday night. He didn’t say a single word about the injured police officer or the endangered citizens. It almost seemed he was trying to sweep these incidents under the rug, and I have to ask myself why. What interest would Mr. de Lancie have in protecting the reputation of someone like Vitali? I have the same question for you, Jerome. Why do you care what Vitali thinks?”

Harding’s face turned a deeper shade of red, but Nick continued, unperturbed.

“There are stacks of files on Vitali in the basement of the US Attorney’s Office. Everyone knows that, but we can’t prove any wrongdoings. Now we have a tiny chance to convict him of a crime. I won’t allow some corrupt bureaucrat to destroy this opportunity.”

“Be careful, Mayor Kostidis.” Harding’s voice was reduced to a threatening whisper. “What are you trying to suggest with that comment?”

“What am I trying to suggest?” Nick stopped just a few inches before the gigantic police commissioner, who was at least a head taller than him. “I have the suspicion that there are many influential people on Vitali’s payroll. Because of their silence, he’s in a position to do what he wants. I won’t tolerate the Mob ruling my city any longer, and I hope that you agree with me, Jerome.”

Harding stared at him and took a deep breath. But then he ran his hand through his dense white hair and sighed. Suddenly, his anger seemed to have blown over.

“You’re right,” he finally said, and let himself fall into a leather chair at the conference table. “The city is as corrupt as it’s ever been. We’re tilting at windmills. But the way you’re doing it won’t work.”

“Yes, it will,” Nick disagreed. “It’s the only way. We must publicly denounce this corruption. No politician will dare to side with a man like Vitali. His political network is paralyzed, at least for now.”

The police commissioner was silent.

“Jerome!” Nick looked at him imploringly. “This is my job, my struggle. I won’t capitulate because of convenience or fear and look the other way like so many others do. I want to put a stop to Sergio Vitali’s game.”

“When he’s gone another man will take his place,” Harding said, frowning. “It’ll never end. You know that as well as I do.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Frank Cohen entered the room.

“They caught the guy who tried to kill Vitali. It’s on the news right now. He’s even confessed.”

Harding and the mayor jumped to their feet.

“They say he was a former bodyguard of Vitali’s who wanted revenge.”

“Not the Colombian drug cartel, Nick,” Harding said disdainfully. “Just a frustrated ex-bodyguard.”

Nick didn’t answer and shook his head in silence.

“In case you should need me, I’ll be at police headquarters,” the police commissioner said. “I should take care of this matter personally before even more damage is done.”

Harding had barely left the office when Nick turned on the television. He and Frank silently watched a report about the alleged perpetrator’s arrest.

“Isn’t it strange,” Frank said, “that this guy turns himself in to the police and confesses even though they weren’t even searching for him? That’s too good to be true.”

“Simple solutions always make me suspicious.” Nick furrowed his brow in thought. “Four days after a sizeable amount of cocaine was seized due to an anonymous tip, someone makes an attempt on Vitali’s life. We know from our informants that a war is in the making between the Colombian drug cartel and the local crime syndicate. Then three men are shot dead at the port—all of them Italian—who, if we dug deeper, would surely turn out to be Vitali’s men.”

He turned off the television.

“Vitali has disappeared. He must have been wounded, and that’s why we haven’t seen or heard from him. Damn it, all of this is related. But everyone else refuses to believe it.”

“How could this guy drive the car and shoot a Kalashnikov through the open window at the same time?”

Frank shook his head.

“It seems to me that there are people who would prefer for all of this to simply disappear,” Nick said. “This whole thing is—”

The telephone rang, and he pushed the button of the intercom system.

“It’s Eugene Varelli,” Allie said, “and he says it’s urgent.”

Eugene Varelli was the New York State commissioner of health.

“Hello, Nick,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but it looks like we have a serious problem on our hands.”

“Great.” Nick rolled his eyes. He put the telephone on speaker so that Frank could listen in. “What kind of problem is it this time?”

“The FBI tried calling but couldn’t reach you. I said I’d call myself. We received an anonymous threat in the mail today, so my people didn’t take it seriously,” Varelli said, “but then I received a phone call about an hour ago. A man threatened to infect groceries with anthrax spores. He named the addresses of two stores in Queens and Morningside Heights. He allegedly infected some Freezo brand frozen hamburger patties. I’ve sent some people there to check all possibly affected products.”

“Great.”

“The FBI is taking this threat pretty seriously, Nick. The man didn’t sound like a nutcase. Furthermore, he made precise demands and announced that he wanted to make it public.”

“What are his demands?”

“Three million dollars to a numbered offshore account. And…”

“And what?”

“Your resignation.”

“He doesn’t want me to personally hand over the money, does he?”

“I don’t think sarcasm is appropriate in this situation,” Varelli replied stiffly. “How should we proceed?”

Nick threw a glance at Frank and then sighed.

“Inform the police and the US Department of Health.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and Eugene,” Nick said. “Keep me posted.”

He hung up. It was silent for a moment, and then Nick leaped out of his chair.

“Sergio Vitali is calling in the cavalry,” he said. “I’d bet my right hand that this act of terrorism is just a diversion to get Cesare’s death and the assassination attempt out of the headlines.”

Frank looked concerned.

“And what if this is a genuine terrorist?”

Nick grinned wearily. “Then I’ll resign and spend the rest of my life playing golf and fly-fishing. And I won’t turn around to look at Sodom and Gomorrah. That I swear to you, Frank.”

Naturally, the anthrax story was leaked to the press in spite of being highly classified information. The public’s reaction bordered on hysteria, and the media did its part to fuel the panic. The press focused on the anonymous terrorist and his strange demands. Old documentaries that had gathered dust in the TV station’s archives were dug up showing people who had been infected with anthrax. There were reports about how dangerous anthrax was, and interviews with any obscure expert they could find confirming that the disease would lead to certain death within two to three days. All of the Freezo brand products in the city were confiscated, which in turn led to vehement protests by the company’s management. The FBI checked laboratories across the country in order to find out where the pathogen could possibly have originated. The mayor established a crisis committee and a hotline where concerned citizens could get more information. The telephones rang off the hook, and many families decided that it would be better to visit distant relatives outside the city.

“That was good work,” Sergio said, satisfied, as van Mieren reported on the operation’s success.

“They have their assassin, and he’s got nothing to do with any Colombians.” Nelson smiled. “There won’t be a gang war, and everybody calmed down.”

“Your name is out of the headlines,” Massimo affirmed. He was relieved that his father had recovered so quickly and was able to once again make decisions. On their way from Long Island to Mount Kisco, the helicopter flew over Queens. During the flight, Sergio dictated to Nelson a list of people he should contact. He needed to know who was still on his side and what Kostidis had up his sleeve. Sergio was completely sure that the mayor wouldn’t believe the story of the self-confessed assassin. More than ever before, he had the feeling that Kostidis was a serious threat. It was late afternoon when Sergio entered his house near Mount Kisco. His second eldest son, Domenico, came to meet him with a concerned expression.

“Papa!” he called. “Thank God!”

Sergio hugged him clumsily with his right arm.

“How’s your mother?”

“She refuses to take the sedatives. But she’s somewhat composed. I still can’t believe that Cesare is dead.”

“Yes, it’s terrible.”

Sergio crossed the entrance hall, followed by his sons and Nelson van Mieren. He entered the grand living room. Constanzia was sitting on the massive leather couch with her daughters-in-law Victoria and Isabelle. Her sister Rosa and cousin Maria were also with her. Dressed in black, the five women had tearstained faces. Sergio’s eyes fell on a large framed picture of Cesare that someone had decorated with a black ribbon, and his stomach cramped painfully for a moment.

“Good afternoon,” Sergio said.

“Mr. Vitali”—a young doctor from Mount Kisco walked toward him with quick steps—“my condolences. It’s a real tragedy.”

“Yes, it is, indeed. Thank you.” Sergio nodded. Constanzia caught sight of her husband at that moment and jumped up with surprising agility. Her face, swollen from nonstop crying, contorted into an enraged mask.

“Assassino!” she screamed and charged Sergio before anyone could stop her. “L’hai ammazzato! Bestia! Assassino! You had him killed! Your own son!”

The other women jumped up, appalled, and Massimo and Domenico rushed to embrace their rampaging mother. They were visibly shocked by the allegations she flung at their father. The doctor stared at the woman in shock.

“He annoyed you!” Constanzia screamed. “You always despised him because he wasn’t as cold as you are! You had him killed, you cold-blooded bastard! Just like you sent my father to prison, when you knew it would be his certain death! You ordered the deaths of so many who were in your way, and now my baby, my darling. Oh, dio mio!”

She was reeling, and her tirade erupted into loud wailing. Her voice barely had anything human left in it.

“You’re not in your right mind, Constanzia,” Sergio said, extending his hand toward her.

“Don’t touch me, you murderer!” she screeched.

“No one did anything to Cesare,” he said in a calm voice. “He panicked and hung himself with his own belt. He was probably all coked up again.”

He noticed the incredulous glances of the doctor and his daughters-in-law, he saw the doubt in Nelson’s eyes, and he knew that even both his sons believed their mother in that moment.

“You never liked Cesare,” Constanzia said in a quieter voice. “The only thing you cared about was your damn business! I hate you!”

“Please give her a sedative injection,” Sergio said, turning to the doctor. “The pain of our son’s death is too much for her nerves.”

“Yes!” Constanzia laughed with utter hatred. “You just keep telling them that! But I know you, Sergio Vitali! I know exactly what you’re capable of! You’re as cold as ice!”

“Mama!” Domenico said in desperation. “Be quiet, please! Let’s go upstairs. Papa just returned from the hospital. He’s also grieving.”

“No, he’s not.” Constanzia freed herself from their grip. “This man never grieves. He has no emotions because he has no heart.”

Then she turned around and left the salon, followed by Victoria, Rosa, Maria, and the doctor. Sergio sat down awkwardly in an armchair.

“Bring me a whiskey, Massimo,” he said. His son obeyed, while the others stood there, silent and ill at ease. Constanzia’s uncontrolled fit of rage had profoundly shocked them because she was always calm and friendly.

“Why are you staring at me like that, Isabelle?” Sergio asked Massimo’s wife. “Do you really believe that I ordered Cesare’s death?”

“No,” the young woman said quickly, shaking her head, “of course not. It’s just terrible to see her suffer like this. She was very attached to Cesare.”

“I know,” Sergio replied. “It’s hard for her. She refuses to accept death. She also blamed me for her father’s death when he died of cancer. She’ll calm down again.”

Alex sat at her desk and read the Times article about Cesare Vitali’s suicide. She shivered as she recalled her first and only encounter with Sergio’s youngest son, which could very well have ended fatally for her. Her assistant Marcia peeked in through the door.

“Mr. Vitali’s on the phone,” she whispered dramatically, “and Mr. St. John wants you to call him back. It’s urgent.”

“Thanks.” Alex picked up the receiver. She had been waiting three days to hear from Sergio. She was in deep and time was flying by. First the attempt on Sergio’s life, then his son’s death, and now—after the alleged assassin was arrested—a terrorist dominated the newspaper headlines. Alex was quite sure that the men in that car were not former bodyguards, but perhaps it was best that no one found out the truth. She for one had banished any thought of that terrible night from her mind.

“Sergio?” she said.

“No. This is Massimo Vitali.”

“How’s your father?”

“Better. He wants to see you, Alex. If you can arrange it, right now.”

“I’m very busy,” Alex said evasively. She didn’t want to see Sergio.

“It’s important. My father asked you to visit him at his Park Avenue apartment. I can send a car if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take a taxi,” Alex answered. “And Massimo—I’m sorry to hear about your brother. I read it in the newspaper today.”

“Thank you,” Sergio’s son said in the same cold voice of his father. “So when will you be here?”

“In an hour.”

Alex stood up without further ado. It was better to get this visit over and done with instead of procrastinating. Mark Ashton’s desk on the trading floor was empty, but Alex ran into him in the hallway. He had just returned from lunch.

“Did you reach Oliver?”

“I’m meeting him this weekend,” Mark responded. “He said that he would help me if he can.”

Something else occurred to Alex.

“Did St. John ask you today about Syncrotron by chance?”

“Yes,” Mark said, looking at his boss in surprise, “he sure did. Is that a new client?”

“No.” Alex grinned and winked at him. “It’s part of my plan. We’ll lure St. John down a dead end and watch what happens next.”

Sergio lay on the couch in his Park Avenue apartment. He’d made one phone call after another to ensure the loyalty of his “friends,” but the result was devastating in almost every case. Most of them had someone make flimsy excuses on their behalf, and the ones to whom he spoke acted very reserved, or even turned him away.

“Fred Schumer’s out of his office.” Nelson hung up the telephone receiver. “His secretary doesn’t know when he’ll be back.”

Sergio sighed. Fred Schumer was the powerful chairman of the House Oversight Committee, an influential man who usually didn’t care about rumors. Sergio had known him for over twenty years. Schumer had been extremely helpful on several occasions.

“It doesn’t look good.” Nelson looked concerned.

“These goddamn cowards,” Sergio growled. “Gutless opportunists. They can kiss my ass.”

He was tired, and his injured shoulder was hurting, but at least his mind was functioning impeccably again.

“But we need them,” Nelson said, voicing his concern.

“I know!” Sergio’s anger flared. “But what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Massimo and Luca exchanged a telling look. The situation was serious. Sergio could lose his power if he lost the protection of his political connections. The television was on, and the newscast reported hourly about the latest developments in the anthrax case. Then Mayor Kostidis appeared on the screen. He stood on the city hall steps with dozens of reporters and TV cameras crowded around him. Sergio sat up straight. Massimo, Luca, and Nelson also fell silent and listened.

“Mayor Kostidis, what do you think about the terrorist demanding your resignation?” the NBC reporter asked.

“In my opinion, this is nothing but a clever diversion,” Kostidis replied calmly.

He was filled with energy and seemed to be completely in control of the situation, although he had barely slept since Saturday.

“What kind of diversion?” another journalist yelled.

“There was an assassination attempt on Sergio Vitali on Saturday night,” Kostidis said, “after a large shipment of cocaine was seized by the customs authorities at the Brooklyn port on Tuesday. The drugs were discovered on a freighter coming from Costa Rica, which is the drug cartel’s classic transportation route. The police and customs authorities received an anonymous tip. We’ve been monitoring Vitali’s connection with the port for a long time.”

“That goddamn bastard,” Sergio muttered with a stoic expression. The other men were silent.

“A gang war rages between Vitali and the Colombian drug cartel. Three men were shot dead at the port on Sunday evening—three Americans of Italian origin—who likely worked for Vitali. It seems plausible to me that the attempt on Vitali’s life was revenge for blowing the cover of a drug shipment.”

“But the perpetrator has been caught,” one of the reporters argued.

“That’s rather unlikely, isn’t it?” Kostidis smiled. “I assume that the man who confessed to this crime has been paid off by Vitali. He’ll be sentenced to two years in prison, and then he’ll be released again after one year for good conduct. The public is reassured that this is just one lunatic instead of a gang war.”

“How do you know about all this, Mayor Kostidis?”

“I don’t know anything,” the mayor replied, “but I suspect that the sole purpose of this scheme to poison groceries is to distract us from the assassination attempt on Vitali.”

“These are dangerous speculations, Mayor Kostidis,” one reporter said. “Do you have any evidence?”

“Not yet. But I’ll have it soon. I was a US attorney fighting against these criminals long enough to know their methods and ways of thinking.”

“You can’t call Mr. Vitali a criminal!”

“Really? I can’t?” Kostidis’s dark eyes sparkled. “Well, I’m doing it! He may own many serious businesses and donate millions of dollars to charities, but if you could take a look behind his mask of altruism, you’d see that he’s a criminal. Sergio Vitali is the godfather of New York City.”

Massimo, Luca, and Nelson threw covert glances at Sergio, but he kept a straight face.

“You’ve got to give it to this man,” he said eventually. “He’s pretty clever. It’s a real shame that he’s not on our side.”

“He’s dangerous,” Nelson replied in concern, “extremely dangerous. He’s seen through everything.”

“But he has no evidence,” Massimo objected. “He talks and talks, and that’s all he does.”

“Kostidis doesn’t need evidence,” Sergio answered grimly. “Every word he says rattles the people who are on our side. Not one of them will publicly side with us as long he utters such things on television. They can’t afford to because they’d lose their jobs otherwise.”

“Let’s do something about him!” Massimo shouted passionately. “Why don’t we sue him for libel and slander? How can he claim such things?”

Sergio threw a glance at his son and slowly shook his head. “We’ve got to do something,” he said.

“But what do you suggest?” Nelson asked. “I could try to obtain a preliminary injunction that prohibits him from—”

“That’s useless,” Sergio snapped. “Kostidis doesn’t give a crap about preliminary injunctions or libel actions. He’s obsessed with being right. As a matter of fact—he is.”

“We’ll shut him up!” Massimo said.

“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy,” Sergio countered. “He is the mayor of this city. He’s very influential and incredibly popular. There’s only one solution in his case.”

The room was dead silent. Each of the men understood what Sergio meant.

“No.” Nelson broke the silence and stood up. “You can’t kill the mayor.”

“Who said anything about killing?” Sergio stared at the television screen with a gloomy face. “An accident—a tragic, regrettable accident. A human life is so fragile.”

Nelson looked at his old friend and realized that he was serious. Sergio was in a precarious position: he was still recovering from the shooting, and he was distraught because of Cesare’s death and Constanzia’s violent reaction. Old friends were avoiding him, and the house of cards of sensitive relationships threatened to collapse. The trouble with Ortega and the port was the icing on the cake. Kostidis could cause severe damage. This crisis had come to a head. It was time for action. “He must disappear,” Sergio said at that moment, “the faster, the better.”

“We shouldn’t plan on that option right away,” Nelson objected carefully. “We could intimidate Kostidis and tell him clearly that it would be better for him to shut up.”

“Intimidate him?” Sergio laughed and immediately grimaced in pain. “How do you plan to intimidate this man? Kostidis doesn’t fear the devil himself!”

“We could…intimidate him physically.”

Sergio snorted disdainfully and held his empty glass to Luca, who instantly refilled it with whiskey.

“He’d crawl in front of the cameras to proclaim his allegations if he was half dead.” Sergio finished the glass with one gulp. “No, Nicholas Kostidis doesn’t understand threats.”

“But if he dies, they will immediately suspect you.”

“Once he’s gone, I’ll finally have my peace. Remember that the men who will investigate his death are on our payroll.”

Nelson van Mieren shook his head determinedly. He didn’t care if Massimo and Luca witnessed his insubordination.

“I won’t be a party to that,” he finally said. “I’ve always been on your side, Sergio. I’ve fought quite a few battles and wars with you. We’ve built up all of this and managed to make it legal. I understood that we needed to get some people out of the way every now and then. But if you order the assassination of the mayor, then it will have far broader implications than we’ll be able to handle. His death would drag all of us into the abyss!”

Sergio stared in surprise at his oldest and most loyal companion. He wasn’t used to hearing such explicit opposition from him.

“I know you’re not afraid of anything,” Nelson implored “but we can also solve this problem. Right now it’s important to come to an agreement with Ortega. Everything else will turn out all right.”

“Kostidis is destroying everything I’ve built,” Sergio said in a sinister tone. “He ’s tasted blood and won’t let go anymore. You know that as well as I do!”

“If you plan on killing him, I want no part of it,” Nelson repeated in a low voice as he looked away. Sergio raised himself up with difficulty, but he hadn’t lost all of his strength.

“Nelson,” he said softly, “you’re my oldest friend. You’re the only person on this planet I would call a friend. However, you know that I can’t afford this. You understand that Kostidis has turned into an incalculable risk, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Nelson nodded, “but that doesn’t mean you need to kill him!”

Sergio stared straight through him for a long time. After a while, Nelson bowed his head.

“If you’ll excuse me now,” he said, “I need to go to the medical examiner’s office. The results of the autopsy should be available at one o’clock. I also need to post bail for Silvio.”

Sergio sat down again after Nelson left the room. He looked around aimlessly, looking gloomy.

“Luca,” he said eventually, “please prepare a plan for how we can silence Kostidis once and for all. I don’t care how you do it. The most important thing is that it happens fast.”

Luca nodded.

“And pick two of your best men. They should keep an eye on Nelson around the clock.”

“Okay, boss.” Luca bowed slightly and left.

“Papa,” Massimo said, turning to his father after silently following this scene, “do you think that Nelson will betray us?”

“No,” Sergio replied, sounding tired. “Nelson’s sick. He’s getting old. His nerves aren’t the best anymore. He was different back in the day, but he’s forgotten what it means to wage a war.”

“But Ortega—” Massimo started to say.

“I’m not talking about Ortega,” Sergio said. “I’m talking about Kostidis. His weapons are much more subtle than Ortega’s, but no less effective. He takes advantage of every sign of weakness. He’s clever, too.”

When Alex arrived at Sergio’s apartment, she had to admit that he seemed to be in control of his situation, although he was clearly still unwell. His face was leaner than usual, and his expression was more pronounced and colder. He looked like a general—proud, aware of his power. The apartment, which was usually deserted, was crowded with his men. Alex even had to put up with them searching her purse.

“I’m very sorry about your son,” Alex said, stopping a few feet shy of him. She made no attempt to kiss him. She had not forgotten that he’d knowingly put her life at risk.

“Thank you,” he replied, “it’s hard for his mother.”

“And for you?”

His eyes narrowed for a split second, and then he raised his shoulders.

“Cesare was a weak person,” he said. “He was a drug addict, a frail man.”

“But he was your son!” Alex was shocked by his indifference.

“And still, he didn’t mean more to me than anyone else,” Sergio countered. “Are you shocked now? Why should I pretend to be the grieving father if I’m not?”

Alex remained silent. If she thought that he needed comfort after all that had happened, then she was wrong. Sergio was miles away from any kind of human feelings.

“How are you, cara?” he asked.

Alex didn’t respond to his question. “How are you?”

“Getting better. They removed the bullet.”

Alex couldn’t believe it. He acted as if this were all as trivial as an appendectomy.

“I’m wondering why you’re keeping half an army of bodyguards in your apartment,” she said coolly. “The television said that they arrested the shooter.”

Sergio sat down on the sofa.

“Well, you never know.” His expression was inscrutable.

“Maybe you vaguely remember that I was standing right next to you when you were shot,” Alex countered harshly, “and without a bulletproof vest at that! It wasn’t this guy. So who was it then?”

“I know who it was,” countered Sergio, “but that doesn’t matter. It wasn’t meant personally.”

“It wasn’t meant personally?” Alex laughed in disbelief. “I think I’d take it personally if someone was trying to kill me!”

“I stepped on someone’s toes.” Sergio sipped his whiskey to numb the pain in his shoulder, at least a little bit. “And that was his response.”

Alex stared at Sergio. He felt more like a stranger than ever before. The presence of the armed men triggered the same uneasy feeling she had at the warehouse in Brooklyn.

“Come, sit down next to me!” Sergio asked her. Alex hesitated. She complied with his request but sat at the far end of the couch.

“Why did you want to see me?” she asked stiffly. “I dropped everything because your son said it was urgent.”

“I thought about our conversation,” Sergio said. “You mentioned that you wanted to end our relationship.”

Alex kept silent and waited for him to keep talking.

“I understand that you’re angry with me,” he continued in an unusually reasonable manner. “I’ve made some mistakes. But I don’t want to lose you, and that’s why I’d like to suggest something to you.”

Alex didn’t want to hear his suggestion. He leaned forward and grabbed her hand before she could get up.

“You don’t have to give me an answer right away. Take your time and think about it.” He didn’t smile. His eyes were inscrutable. He looked at her for a while and then let go of her hand. He stood up.

“I’m divorcing Constanzia,” he said to Alex’s complete astonishment, “and I want you to be my wife.”

Alex didn’t think she had heard right. Marry Sergio? Just a year ago she would have thought about it, but she’d seen far too much of Sergio’s world. The things that she’d witnessed had revolted her. Sergio turned toward her.

“So what do you think?”

Alex struggled to keep her composure. He had her cornered. She searched desperately for the right words.

“That…comes as quite a surprise.”

“You could keep working or not. You could do whatever you want.” His voice was rough. “I’ll buy you a house and we could have children. Isn’t that what you want?”

Alex cringed at the thought of her life married to Sergio and completely at his mercy. People died by his order, and the memory of the dark warehouse in Brooklyn made her wince.

“Promise me that you’ll think about it?” He squatted down in front of her and grabbed her hands. The look in his blue eyes was serious, and something deep inside them alarmed Alex. Sergio was a man with many faces. There was a reason for everything he did. But why did he want to marry her all of a sudden? What had happened?

“I’ll think about it,” she replied to put him off. “I promise.”

“Good.” There was an irritating hint of triumph in his smile. She felt quite sure that this was part of a larger plan that she didn’t understand. She was glad that he didn’t try to kiss or sleep with her. Alex rejected his offer to be driven downtown. She just wanted to get out of this apartment, away from this man she couldn’t figure out and who terrified her so much.

Thomas Ganelli, the police officer who was shot during the raid on the Bronx apartment building and who succumbed to his injuries a few days later, was buried at the Astoria Park Cemetery in Queens. The American flag was laid out on his casket, which was carried by his colleagues from the Forty-First Precinct. Accompanied by their spouses, rows of police officers wearing splendid dress uniforms were sweating in the sweltering heat of this July afternoon; they were in a state of shock and anger at the senseless death of their comrade. Of course, Police Commissioner Jerome Harding was also in attendance at this highly publicized funeral. Furthermore, officials from the Department of State, high-ranking officers of the NYPD, and the mayor of New York City were there. Harding delivered an emotional half-hour speech at the open grave, in which he demanded even tougher measures against every criminal. Nick Kostidis kept his speech short. He knew that Harding’s tone was inappropriate in this situation, and therefore limited himself to words of consolation for the family and the colleagues of the deceased. In addition, he thanked all the police officers for their dangerous and important work.

Frank Cohen stood in the very back and once again admired his boss’s talent to spontaneously find the right words in every situation. Frank was sincerely moved, even though he didn’t know this young police officer. When the funeral was over, Nick gave his condolences to the parents and the young widow and promised genuine assistance on behalf of the city administration, not just empty gestures. Then the two men walked back to the waiting limousine in silence.

“It’s a goddamn shame that so many young people must die,” Nick said as they were on their way back to Manhattan. He stared gloomily at the passing apartment blocks. “It’s completely senseless.”

“Ganelli’s parents were really consoled by your words,” Frank remarked. “The people could feel that you honestly mean it.”

“I wish that I could have said some honest words at his medal of valor ceremony instead of his funeral.” Nick leaned back in fatigue.

The past weeks had been exhausting. The terrorist had disappeared, and the FBI couldn’t figure out whether anthrax cultures had ever been stolen from a laboratory. There was a temporary cease-fire in the mutual mudslinging between Nick and Sergio Vitali. After Cesare Vitali’s autopsy clearly confirmed suicide by hanging with a belt as the cause of death, the press turned to other topics. No evidence suggested foul play was involved in the young man’s death.

Despite the superficial easing of the situation, it seemed like new threatening storm clouds were forming on the horizon. That very morning, Nick found a letter with no return address on his desk. This happened frequently, but this letter was neither postmarked nor did it have a postage stamp. Inside was a threat. You will die if you don’t shut up. It was written on a simple white sheet—a normal piece of copy paper. The script was apparently from a laser printer. No one in the office had a clue how the letter had found its way to the mayor’s desk. Nick had crumpled it up and thrown it into the wastepaper basket, shaking his head. But Frank had fished out the letter and put it in his pocket.

“Nick,” he started carefully after they left the Midtown tunnel behind them and arrived in Manhattan, “I know that you don’t want to hear it, but I’m very concerned about that letter.”

“Good grief.” Nick smiled indulgently. “You know how many threatening letters I’ve received in my life. That’s just the way it is when you’re holding political office. You’re always unpopular with some people.”

“No,” Frank objected, “it’s different this time. Especially in light of what has happened over the past weeks. I have the feeling that this is a serious threat. Maybe it’s this terrorist; maybe Vitali is behind it. You’ve pushed him into a corner pretty hard with your public statements.”

“Anonymous letters aren’t really Vitali’s style.”

“Please, Nick. You need extra personal protection—at least until this whole fuss about Vitali has settled down a bit.”

“I don’t want strangers following me into the restroom,” Nick said, warding off the idea. “Nothing will happen.”

“I’d still prefer if at least your wife had—”

“Mary doesn’t need to know about this,” Nick replied. “It would only upset her. Anyway, she’s going to her sister’s in Montauk with Christopher and his fiancée in a few days to prepare for the wedding. I hope that this whole mess blows over by then.”

Nick smiled at Frank reassuringly.

“Your nerves are overstrained, Frank. You haven’t been getting enough sleep lately. Why don’t you take a weekend off for a change?”

“Because I’m worried about you,” Frank answered. “At least promise me that you’ll stop riding the subway through the city by yourself?”

“Only if you don’t force any bodyguards on me in return.”

Nick closed the issue with a smile, but Frank didn’t give up.

“How did this letter get on your desk? That’s what gives me a headache.”

“I don’t want to hear another word about this ridiculous letter.” Nick shook his head. “Anyone from the cleaning crew could have put it there!”

“Let’s hope so,” Frank sighed, shaking his head.

Raymond Howard was on the phone, preparing for the Fourth of July fireworks show in lower Manhattan. He sat in his office with a phone to each ear, and was trying to simultaneously calm down both the head of the festival, who was close to a nervous breakdown, and the raging chairman of the Veterans Association, when he saw Frank standing in the door. He signaled his colleague to wait and ended both conversations.

“For God’s sake, these idiots,” he fumed. “I can’t take this annual jockeying anymore.”

One of the telephones rang, but he ignored it.

“Good you’re here,” he said to Frank. “You could help me set the seating plan for the official gallery. The president’s daughter is coming, and she’s bringing a friend.”

Then he noticed Frank’s worried expression.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t know.” Frank pulled the crumpled note out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Howard. “What do you think about this?”

Howard took the sheet and read the line with raised eyebrows. The second telephone started to ring.

“Hmm,” he said and looked up, “sounds quite determined. What does Nick say about it?”

“He won’t take it seriously,” Frank said in a depressed voice, “as usual.”

“And you?”

“I have this strange feeling. I’ve seen a few threatening letters addressed to him over the past years, but they never threatened to kill him.”

Howard shrugged his shoulders.

“At least he promised not to take the subway for the next few weeks.” Frank folded the sheet and put it into his pocket. “Lhota should earn his wages for a change.”

“Well, that seems like a pretty good idea to me.” Raymond Howard nodded and put his hand on the telephone receiver.

“I hope you’re right.” Frank managed a forced smile. He wondered whether he was the only one who thought that this letter was threatening enough to take seriously.

Just as Alex stepped out of the shower, she heard the telephone ring. The answering machine was turned on as usual, but she listened to hear whose voice would speak after the tone. She hadn’t contacted Sergio since his proposal and was happy that he wasn’t calling to ask for her answer.

“Alex!”

It was Mark, and he sounded unusually agitated.

“Please answer if you’re there! It’s urgent!”

Alex quickly wrapped a towel around herself and grabbed the phone.

“Hey, Mark. What’s so important?”

“Can we meet for dinner tonight?” Mark asked. “We’ve figured out a way to—”

“Hold on!” Alex interrupted. She still feared that Sergio had tapped her telephone line.

“I’ll call you back on my cell phone in a second.” Punching Mark’s number into her cell phone, she stepped out on to the terrace. She’d been invited to Gracie Mansion that evening. Just as Kostidis had promised, she’d received a written invitation. She accepted it after some consideration and also because of Madeleine’s insistence.

“What’s up?” she asked when Mark answered.

“Maybe it would be better not to discuss this over the telephone.” Mark spoke hastily. “Could you fly to Boston with me tonight?”

“No, I’m invited to Gracie Mansion this evening,” Alex replied. “Come on, Mark, tell me. What’s going on?”

“Oliver thinks that it’s virtually impossible to get legal access to the registration documents of an offshore company,” Mark said, “but he had an idea yesterday. We know someone from our college days who works at MIT in Boston. This guy is a real computer geek.”

“Slow down.” Alex shook her head in confusion. “What does this guy have to do with offshore companies?”

“Nothing. But he’s a professional hacker. He works as a programmer at MIT, where he tests the security of software. Oliver’s talked to him over the phone and discussed the problem—without mentioning any names, of course. Our friend knows how to infiltrate computers.” Mark lowered his voice to an excited whisper.

Alex began to understand.

“That sounds pretty illegal.”

“It’s also illegal to trade on insider information.”

Alex contemplated this for a moment. It seemed like this could work. And if it failed, then they’d at least have given it a try.

“We could fly to Boston tomorrow morning,” Mark pushed. Alex felt her heart beating in excitement. She needed to know who was behind these rotten deals. On the other hand, she was afraid of what she might uncover. But her curiosity was ultimately stronger than her fear.

“Book an early flight to Boston,” she said after a short pause. “Leave me a message on my cell phone about when I need to be at the airport. Will Oliver come with us?”

“I think so. If you’re okay with that.”

“For heaven’s sake, yes!” Alex was worried about spending time with Oliver, but she still looked forward to seeing him again.

“I’ll stay in touch. Have fun tonight.”

Alex drove with Trevor and Madeleine to the mayor’s reception. Security guards checked their invitations and then let them pass through the gate. The colonial-style mansion was in a magnificent park at the East River, nestled between tall, old trees. Since Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia chose this house as his residence in 1942, it had become a tradition for every successor to live here. Alex felt her heart pounding when she entered the house. She wasn’t quite sure whether or not she liked Nick Kostidis, and she also didn’t know whether it was a good idea to accept his invitation. In the foyer, Kostidis rushed toward them with open arms and a hearty smile.

“My wife and I are extremely happy that you’re our guest tonight, Alex,” he said with sincere cordiality.

“It’s an honor and pleasure for me,” she replied politely.

Through the wide-open glass doors, they stepped out onto a large terrace that offered a magnificent view of the East River. Alex met Christopher—Nick and Mary Kostidis’s son—and his fiancée Britney Edwards. Then Kostidis introduced other guests such as Canadian ambassador Jacques Toussaint and his wife Véronique; Patrick Grimford, the legendary publisher of the New York Times; Hollywood actor Michael Campione, who lived in Tribeca; fashion czar Kevin Lang; and Francis Dulong, who was a senior partner of the prestigious law firm Dulong & Kirschbaum.

Alex enjoyed lively conversation. It was wonderful to talk with interesting people and forget about her worries for a while. There were champagne cocktails and Japanese hors d’oeuvres offered to the guests by a liveried waiter. After the sticky July day, the mild evening air added to Alex’s good mood.

Mary Kostidis was an unobtrusive and courteous host. Alex liked her right away. They talked for a long time, and Alex sensed the trust and deep connection between her and Nick that can only result from true love, similar to that shared by the Downeys. She shivered, imagining what it would be like to actually marry Sergio Vitali. At the very least, she would stop receiving invitations to Gracie Mansion. During dinner—which was served in one of the splendid salons, with wide-open terrace doors—Alex sat between Kevin Lang and Michael Campione.

Around eleven, the Canadian ambassador and his wife said their good-byes, which lightened the atmosphere, making it less formal and more sociable. All of the people present seemed to know each other fairly well, and the party moved to a different salon with comfortable sofas and armchairs. Alex was talking to Trevor, Madeleine, Michael Campione, Francis Dulong, and his wife when Nick Kostidis joined them.

“The only possible reason for me to consider running for mayor of New York would be this house,” Trevor said jokingly.

“Really?” Nick replied. “Actually, to be honest with you, it was an important reason for me. And hey, you don’t have to mow your own lawn.”

Everyone laughed. Alex found the mayor was downright likable when he was relaxed like this.

“I hope you’re having a good time.”

“I really am. It’s a highly enjoyable evening.” She smiled.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, I’d love another.”

Nick waved a waiter over to fill Alex’s glass with champagne.

“Let’s go outside for a moment to get some fresh air,” Nick suggested, and Alex agreed. They stepped out onto the terrace. It was a mild, warm night. It almost felt like being in the countryside. The city’s lights sparkled on the river’s ink-black water, and there was a scent of lilac and sweet fading flowers in the air.

“Wonderful.” Alex stepped toward the railing of the terrace, taking a deep breath. “It’s hard to believe that we’re in the middle of New York City.”

“Do you sometimes miss your homeland?” Nick Kostidis asked as he stood behind her. She turned around. He had one hand in his pocket and held his glass with the other, observing her with friendly interest.

“Sometimes I miss certain places where I spent my childhood.” She smiled. “Have you ever been to Germany?”

“Unfortunately not,” Nick replied with regret. “Actually, I’ve never even been to Europe.”

“I spent almost all of my holidays with relatives in France or Ticino,” Alex told him. “My family is large. We have uncles, aunts, and cousins everywhere. I especially liked to go to the mountains in the winter. They’re…one of a kind. Just before the first snow falls, the air is as clear as glass. And when you get up in the morning, the entire countryside is white. And the icy winds really push the snow around on the ground. You don’t really feel the seasons in the city.”

She looked pensively into the park’s darkness.

“I miss the smell of fall—the scent of the moist earth and decaying leaves and the fire. Sometimes in Germany the sky is high and wide, and then it’s all foggy again. In the spring, I clearly remember the feeling I had the first time I could go horseback riding outside and gallop across the meadows after a dark winter. I was so happy.”

Caught in her memories, she paused for a moment without noticing the enraptured way Nick Kostidis looked at her.

“In nature,” Alex continued, “I feel small and unimportant. It puts everything in the right perspective.”

The smile vanished from Nick’s face.

“We take ourselves so seriously,” Alex went on, “our lives, our problems, and everyday worries. Only in the face of nature do we realize how insignificant we really are.”

“Is that what we are? Insignificant?”

Alex looked at him. His question was sincere.

“In comparison to nature—yes. Just think about how many millions of years it took for our earth to form. What’s a human life in comparison to that? And who really cares what you do or what you strive for when you’re gone all of a sudden?”

“Those are frightening thoughts.”

“I don’t know. I think that the steady course of nature is very comforting.”

“You’re a real philosopher,” Nick said. Alex tried to detect if she heard a hint of mockery in his voice, but he was sincere.

“No.” She laughed self-consciously. “I just got a bit carried away.”

She was surprised at how openly she could talk to Nick Kostidis.

“In any case, you’ve sparked my interest about Europe,” Nick said. They looked at each other in silence, and then Alex turned away. She didn’t want this conversation to get too personal.

“I couldn’t believe that I was seated next to Michael Campione, of all people. I had a huge crush on him when I was younger,” she said, smiling.

“Really?” Nick also seemed happy to talk about a harmless subject again. “Mike’s an old friend of mine. We grew up in the same neighborhood and had similarly ambitious dreams.”

“Did you realize your dreams?” Alex asked.

“I’ve reached many of my goals,” Nick said, looking at her seriously, “but it’s a strange thing…”

“You don’t dream about the dark side,” she said, and he nodded.

They stood together in silence.

“Which one of Mike’s films is your favorite?”

Alex looked at him for a moment, and then she laughed in embarrassment.

“If I tell you, then you’ll probably think, Of course, what else.”

“Why?”

The intensity of his dark eyes made her nervous, but she had to admit deep inside that she had misjudged Nick Kostidis. He seemed so likable and authentic now.

“It’s Murder, Inc.”

Voices and laughter could be heard from the house.

“Why should I think that?” Nick asked quietly.

“Well, that could explain my fascination with a man like Vitali, don’t you think?”

Nick shook his head slightly.

“I don’t think that you’re fascinated by him anymore.”

Alex stopped breathing. How could he know that?

“You got angry when I asked you about him on Christmas Day,” Nick said. “But I think you were insecure, and you got mad at me because I saw that.”

Alex laughed insecurely now.

“Did you study psychology?”

“Something like that.” He smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “I was a US attorney, and I think that I’ve developed a fairly good understanding of human behavior. I—”

Mary Kostidis stepped onto the terrace escorted by a young man. Alex recognized him as the one she’d seen with Nick that evening at the Plaza. But she also knew that she’d seen him somewhere else, and that she had a bad feeling about him.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Mary said. “Nick, Ray wants to talk to you for a second.”

“Yes, of course.” He turned toward Alex. “Would you excuse me please, Alex?”

She nodded, looking after him with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty as he disappeared into the house.

“Come in, Alex,” Mary said in a friendly tone, “we still have a little dessert.”

“What’s so important?” Nick asked his assistant after he’d closed the door to his office.

“Another letter was dropped off for you,” Raymond Howard replied, handing him the envelope with just his name written on it.

Nick ripped the envelope open. You didn’t shut up. You will die.

“Bullshit!” He crumpled the paper indignantly. “Where did you get this?”

“It was dropped off with one of the security guards,” Howard said. Nick shrugged his shoulders and sat down at his desk. He ran all ten fingers through his thick, dark hair and stared out the window into the nighttime blackness of the park.

“By the way, the US Attorney’s Office has ordered a judicial investigation in the case of Cesare Vitali.”

“Why would they do that?” Nick looked at his assistant in consternation. “I thought the autopsy confirmed that it was suicide.”

“Vitali claims that his son was killed.”

“That’s utter nonsense! The kid was all coked up and lost his marbles!”

“Well,” Howard said as he strolled through the room, “de Lancie wants to summon you for the investigation.”

“Excuse me?” Nick sensed cold rage rising inside of him. “What’s this all about? What do I have to do with it?”

“You stepped on de Lancie’s toes,” Howard explained. “You compromised him when you stepped in front of the television cameras that morning. And de Lancie is very sensitive.”

“Call him. Now.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“I don’t care,” Nick said abruptly. “I want to speak to him now.”

Howard glanced at his boss and then grabbed the telephone receiver and dialed a number. It took a few seconds, which Nick spent pacing angrily across his office.

“John!” Nick yelled into the telephone, enraged. “I just heard that you’re ordering a judicial investigation.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” John de Lancie replied, not even mentioning the unusual time of this call. “There are a few inconsistencies that require clarification.”

“What kind of inconsistencies? This kid raided an apartment building with some criminals known to the police under orders from his father. Two people were killed in the process. Vitali Junior was unstable, high on drugs, and then he committed suicide in a sudden panic!”

“He was pressured and physically abused,” de Lancie countered. “The NYPD is currently investigating all officers of the Forty-First Precinct who were on duty that night.”

“For what reason?”

“Cesare Vitale’s body had signs of physical abuse all over it. He was beaten before he died.”

“Well,” Nick said. “And why am I being summoned? Do you think I did it?”

“I’m not obliged to inform you of the details,” de Lancie answered, “but I’ll tell you anyway. You were surprisingly fast showing up at the police station. You talked to officers, made a statement in front of the cameras, and put me in an uncomfortable position.”

“You’re summoning me because you’re upset that I did your job?”

“You interfered with an ongoing police investigation,” the US attorney replied coldly. “You shouldn’t be surprised that now you’re tangled up in this case.”

“That’s ridiculous. And you damn well know it!”

“The only thing I know is that the kid was abused in order to extract a confession. There’s also a well-founded suspicion that it occurred at your instigation.”

“That’s unbelievable!” Nick jumped up in a rage. “Are you seriously insinuating that I solicited police officers to torture a detainee?”

“I’m not insinuating anything,” de Lancie said. “The family of the deceased insists on an investigation of the events.”

“Listen to me closely, John,” Nick interrupted de Lancie in a low, threatening voice. “God knows that I have other things to take care of right now, but I won’t stand idle and watch you trying to publicly discredit me.”

“I don’t have a choice—” de Lancie began, but Nick didn’t let him finish his sentence.

“Oh yes you do!” he yelled. “I did the same job as you long enough to know that no one can put you under pressure—especially not the family of a man who was caught in the act of committing a crime—unless someone has leverage against you.”

“What are you saying?” De Lancie’s voice hardened.

“Should I express myself more clearly?” Nick was so enraged that he was about to call de Lancie one of Vitali’s henchmen.

“I warn you, Kostidis,” John de Lancie said, “don’t interfere with things that are none of your business.”

“You were surprisingly fast to show up at the police station yourself. Why didn’t you just send someone from your staff like you usually do?”

De Lancie’s voice became even frostier: “You may be the mayor of this city, and you may be incredibly popular, but I don’t care. What you insinuated is incredibly insolent. I’ve summoned you before the investigation committee; I advise you to show up. Good night!”

“Can I tell you something, Ray?” Nick slammed down the receiver on the hook, grinning ferociously. “This bastard’s scared. Someone is putting him under serious pressure, someone he’s obligated to. I’m sure it’s Vitali.”

“You think that Vitali bought de Lancie?” Howard opened his eyes wide. “The US attorney?”

“Yes, that’s what I think.” Nick ran his hand through his hair. “The only reason he ordered an investigation is to crucify me. It’s a joke! I didn’t speak to a single police officer that night. Nobody but Vitali himself had an interest in this kid’s death. He really would have been more useful alive.”

“They will charge you with slander if you publicly claim that,” Howard warned him.

“I don’t need to do that,” Nick countered. “De Lancie knows that I suspect him of corruption. But he’s losing his nerve. He’ll make a mistake one day. I’ll find out who’s behind this.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Mary entered the office. She saw her husband standing at the window with a grim expression on his face and his hands linked behind his back. He stared out across the river.

“Some of the guests are ready to leave, Nick.”

“I’ll come in a second,” he replied curtly.

“What are you going to do?” Howard asked.

“What do you think?” Nick looked at his assistant suspiciously.

Howard shrugged his shoulders. “You can’t afford too much negative publicity. Will you tolerate their attempt to publicly discredit you?”

“I’m accountable to my constituents and myself.” Nick turned around. “I won’t let the Mob and its paid henchmen throw me off course! Not through an investigation committee, not through extortion, not through threatening letters! I’ve never let myself be intimidated. Vitali should know better than that.”

His burning black eyes seemed to pierce Howard, and blood rushed into Howard’s face.

“This is my city, Ray. Do you understand?”

Howard turned his gaze away. He had mistaken Nick’s aggressive response for weakness, but Nicholas Kostidis was courageous, and he was tough. Tough as steel. He was the best mayor this city had ever had, but he was too straightforward for this job, too stubborn and unwilling to compromise. He stood in the way of influential men—some of whom didn’t care about human life.

“I need to go back to my guests,” Nick said. “Go home, Ray. I’ll see you here tomorrow morning at nine. And then we’ll devise a strategy.”

Howard responded with a smile, but it vanished after the mayor left the room. It was a shame. There were very few men like Nick Kostidis. But now he had really stepped on Vitali’s toes. He had no future; perhaps it would be better to side with someone who did. The letters warned that the mayor of New York didn’t have long to live.

A bright-blue sky arched across the city’s skyline with the promise of another hot day as Alex took a taxi to LaGuardia Airport. The party had left her with a strange feeling. She had long suspected that Nick Kostidis only wanted to use her for his own purposes, but now she wasn’t so sure. Last night, she had gotten to know his likable side, which made her both curious and insecure. She regretted that she couldn’t continue the conversation with Nick; he was certainly more concerned about her than she’d thought. He wasn’t the obsessed fanatic that Sergio claimed he was. He was natural, human. People in New York tended to look at their fellow human beings from the perspective of usefulness. Nick Kostidis was different, and Alex had to admit that she’d gotten him all wrong.

The taxi stopped in front of the airport terminal, and she paid and got out. Her heart tensed up when she saw Oliver standing at the Delta counter. More than a year had passed since she last saw him. Alex mustered all of her courage and walked over to him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, Alex.” His gray eyes gazed at her through his round glasses. He seemed just as relaxed and steadfast as ever. All of a sudden, she realized how much she had missed him. She smiled shyly, and he smiled too. He opened his arms, and she flung her arms around his neck.

“Are we okay?” she whispered, and Oliver nodded his head silently. “I’m so sorry about what happened. I had no idea until Mark told me about it.”

“I survived.” Oliver held her tight for a moment, and then he observed her closely. “You look pretty stressed out.”

“I wish I had listened to you,” Alex said, exhaling deeply, “but now I’m in too deep in this mess. Thank you for helping me.”

“I’m not going to let some Mafia thugs intimidate me,” he said, and Alex didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The fear that had become her constant companion suddenly seemed a little bit more tolerable.

“I missed you, Alex,” Oliver said quietly and cradled her face in his hands, “and I was very worried about you.”

“I missed you, too.” She felt a thick lump in her throat. She quickly wiped away the tears with the back of her hand as she saw Mark walking toward them in the terminal. Oliver grabbed her hand and pressed it firmly. They boarded the flight to Boston at a quarter to nine. During the flight, Oliver explained to Alex and Mark how the incorporation process of an international business worked on the British Virgin Islands and what he hoped to find out with his friend Justin’s help.

At the Boston airport, they took a taxi to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Justin Savier was waiting for them at the Wiesner Building, a futuristic structure that housed the world-renowned MIT Media Lab. Justin wasn’t the geeky computer nerd that Alex expected but a lean, sunburned man with an abundance of dark dreadlocks. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a washed-out T-shirt. The three men greeted each other, and after Alex was introduced, Justin handed out little plastic name tags. They passed through a turnstile at a security gate, and Alex was astonished to find herself in almost monastically simple corridors. There was no indication that scientists were working on the world’s most advanced technologies behind these doors. They rode an elevator two stories underground; they reached a large anteroom with a steel door that looked like a vault.

“The hallowed halls are behind this door,” Justin declared with reverence. Alex was amazed. “America’s intellectual elite spends half of their lives here. The Western world’s most powerful computers are here—supercomputers worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re the heart and the brain of our modern technological world.”

He positioned himself in front of a retina scanner, a green-lit windowpane that was embedded into the wall. It beeped, the steel door opened with a quiet clicking noise, and they entered an imposing hall.

“Welcome to the world of artificial intelligence,” Justin said with a grin. Compared to the solemn silence of the upper stories, the large, fluorescent-lit room was almost shocking. Gray cabinets were lined up in long rows and made an unexpected amount of noise.

“These are air-conditioning units,” Justin said, before Alex could even ask. “It would be unbearably hot in here without them. The computers need an enormous amount of electricity—almost as much as a small town.”

Alex felt like a trespasser sneaking around in a restricted military bunker.

“We’re working with the world’s most advanced supercomputers,” Justin continued. He stopped in front of one of the machines. It seemed practical and unimpressive and was housed in a plain gray cabinet. “For example, this is a Cray-2. With a memory of two terabytes, it can process about 1.6 million operations per second. That one over there is an ETA, which is already eight times more powerful. The SUPRENUM is even a little faster. It’s connected to thirty-two parallel operating node computer systems and is capable of unbelievably complex processing. These contain the largest nonmilitary databases in the Western world.”

Alex, Oliver, and Mark nodded in fascination. They continued walking.

“These supercomputers are quickly on their way to overcoming the limitations of the human brain. The future of our world belongs to machines like this,” Justin said.

“Sounds like science fiction,” Oliver remarked, and Justin grinned.

“Cool, isn’t it?” he said. They had entered into a confusing labyrinth of hallways flanked by gigantic computers. After walking a while, they reached a row of offices—similar to the layout at LMI—separated only by glass walls. Justin entered the third glass box, its door bearing his name. As expected, the small room was stuffed to the gills with the most modern computer technology. An unimaginable array of computers and hardware components, drives, printers, monitors, and all kinds of other conceivable devices cluttered the room. An impressive tangle of cables disappeared into the floor. Justin sat down at his hopelessly overloaded desk, which had no fewer than five monitors on top of it. He leaned back and lit a cigarette. He simultaneously pushed a button, which started the exhaust fan in the ceiling.

Alex began briefing him on the PBA Steel matter and her suspicion that someone was transacting illegal business behind her back using her confidential information.

“Mark found out that there’s a connection between the brokerage firm that purchased the stocks and LMI,” she said, “and we’d love to know who’s behind it.”

Oliver explained to Justin about offshore companies and that it was virtually impossible to find out who founded them.

“Hmm.” Justin scratched his head. “Your company created a corporation, which in turn is owned by another corporation that is involved in illegal business. Do I have that right?”

“Sort of.” Alex was impressed by Justin’s quick comprehension. “LMI has launched a fund that, among other things, is invested in a venture-capital company called SeaStarFriends, which in turn is registered on the British Virgin Islands.”

Justin drummed his fingers on the desktop.

“Where should I start?” He looked at his visitors’ faces.

“At LMI,” Oliver decided.

“Can you get into LMI’s central computer?” Mark inquired.

“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Justin nodded. “They’re probably working with an industry-standard operating system.”

“Are you familiar with that?” Alex wanted to know, and got an amused look.

“Just a little bit.” Justin grinned.

He asked them for some information about LMI, and then his fingers whizzed around the keyboard. He raised his head with a smile after a few minutes.

“Welcome to LMI,” he announced with a hint of pride and a touch of casual professionalism. “They’re using BankManager 5.3. That’s an old friend of mine, which makes things much easier.”

Mark and Alex leaned forward in disbelief. Oliver grinned.

“LMI has an information security department,” Alex said, voicing her concern. “They’ll notice if someone invades the system from the outside.”

“Sure”—Justin nodded—“BankManager 5.3 has a firewall, just like all the other corporate networks. But coincidentally, IBM gave us a contract for this system’s security testing—something we frequently do for software companies. At that time, we installed a ‘back door,’ which allows us to circumvent the normal protections. We can gain access to the entire system at any given time.”

“Does this mean,” Mark asked, “that you can get into the central computer of any company that uses this software?”

“That’s right.” Justin leaned back with a satisfied smile on his face. “We’re concerned with the system’s security. We work on improving security to protect against attacks from lunatics who want to wreak havoc.”

He turned his eyes back to the monitor and worked the keyboard relentlessly.

“Let’s open the back door now and walk in,” he said with a focused expression.

“BM 5.3 is protected by a secure-access firewall. This is a password-protected authentication method. Secure access works with Phazer, a fiber optic device that detects and defends against both internal and external attacks on the network.”

Alex leaned forward and looked at the incomprehensible row of numbers and letters flashing by on the monitor.

“But if this thing recognizes every access,” she asked, “how can you get into the system without anyone noticing?”

“Like I said, through the back door,” Justin answered. “There’s a command that gives me administrator’s rights.”

“Aha.”

“Such a large and complex system as BM 5.3 naturally has strict access controls. The network administrator is the only authorized individual to read, modify, or delete any system files. He also assigns access rights to individual users and monitors them. BM 5.3 has a directory structure that we call Listing, with which the network administrator monitors access rights. Every user has his or her own identification code, the UIC. Based on this personal code, the computer recognizes which resources are available to the user after log-in.”

“So those people who monitor everything can also snoop around in my files?” Alex asked in disbelief.

“Of course,” Justin said.

“That’s just unbelievable!” She shook her head in disgust. “I save tons of important things on my computer.”

“If they are so secret that no one should know about them, then you shouldn’t save them on your computer. I can show you a trick to set up a secret file even your administrator can’t crack.”

“You get full access with one simple command?” Mark was mightily impressed.

“Yes.” Justin looked up and grinned. “Pretty easy, isn’t it? You just need to know the command. If you tried to hack the passwords, it would attract attention right away. Most of the software for password hacking needs an incredible amount of capacity. We also happened to install Stealth into BM 5.3, a program that allows us to access the system unnoticed. It’s named after the stealth bomber that enemy radar can’t detect, and it makes the external user invisible to the network administrator.”

“What’s the secret command?” Mark asked curiously.

“I’ll tell you,” Justin answered with a smile, “because the command itself doesn’t really get you very far.”

He turned the monitor slightly to the right so that Alex, Oliver, and Mark could see the screen and typed a combination of numbers and letters on the keyboard.

The screen turned black for a few seconds, and then the password prompt appeared.

“And now?” Mark asked.

“This system has an embedded command that circumvents the password. You have to think of it as a universal key.”

The computer hummed away busily. Then the monitor flickered and displayed a message that Justin obviously expected, but it took Alex and Mark’s breathe away.

“Unbelievable,” Alex murmured.

“Ingenious!” Mark said, visibly impressed.

“Now we have unrestricted access to the server.” Justin licked his lips like a satisfied cat. “Let’s see if we can solve your problem. What should I look for?”

“Private Equity Technology Partners,” Alex said promptly.

“Fund management,” Oliver added. It took a few minutes for Justin to find the securities department information after maneuvering through various LMI server interfaces.

“Holy cow,” he said, “they’ve got hundreds of them!”

“Of course,” Alex said, “investment funds are totally legal.”

Oliver leaned forward and looked over Justin’s shoulder.

“That’s the one,” he said. “May I?”

“Sure, go ahead.” Justin moved aside obligingly. Alex marveled at Oliver’s focus. She had never seen him at work before and noticed that he appeared to be on familiar ground. But after a while the hopeful tension in his face gave way to a look of resignation.

“This is the wrong place,” he said, chewing pensively on his lower lip. “They only manage legal funds, and there’s no indication of risky investments.”

He gave Justin his seat back.

“We need to get into the database module where the offshore companies are managed,” he said.

“Maybe they’re not doing it from headquarters, but from a subsidiary in the Caymans or Switzerland.”

“Okay,” Justin said, “let me try a help command.”

He typed in a combination of numbers and letters again.

“Ah, yes,” he eventually said, “here it is. There are a number of limited partnerships that are owned by the company’s subsidiaries. We have quite a big selection here: LMI in Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Cape Town, or Singapore; Banque Villiers Suisse in Geneva, Zurich, Monaco, and Liechtenstein; Levy & Villiers in Zurich, Nassau/Bahamas, and Georgetown/Grand Cayman; LV Invest on Samoa and Labuan; SeViCo in Panama City, Gibraltar, Road Town/BVI…”

“Stop!” Oliver yelled; everyone looked at him in surprise.

“Let me see,” he said. “They list SeViCo as a subsidiary of LMI? Unbelievable! I thought that only Vitali was behind this, but…”

His eyes met Alex’s.

“SeViCo,” she murmured, “could also be derived from Sergio and Vincent.”

“Exactly,” Oliver said, “and it would be the proof that the two of them are in it together.”

Justin focused and worked silently for almost an hour, but then he shook his head.

“It’s a dead end,” he said. “I’m not getting anywhere with SeViCo. They do it differently; I don’t get it.”

The four of them were at a loss. How all of these companies were related to each other was too complex to figure out. Oliver jumped up and paced back and forth in the tiny office.

“Let’s recap,” he said. “Alex has a suspicion that someone conducts illegal business with her confidential information. Mark and Alex found out that MPM buys the stock of companies that are about to be acquired or merged. According to the commercial register, MPM is owned by Venture Capital SeaStarFriends Limited Partnership. In turn, a fund launched by LMI called Private Equity Technology Partners is invested in the latter. Correct?”

Alex and Mark nodded.

“SeaStarFriends is a partnership registered in the British Virgin Islands. All of this smells like money laundering.” Oliver frowned and shook his head. “We need to approach this differently. Justin, can you try to get into the commercial registry on the British Virgin Islands?”

“Sure.” Justin went back to work. Oliver, Mark, and Alex followed his efforts, tensely registering his every breath.

“I should work for the IRS,” he said after about a half hour. “I’m in.”

The three of them felt electrified.

“The safety measures are quite ridiculous.” Justin pointed to his screen. “Here are the registration numbers of every company registered on the British Virgin Islands…Let’s see…”

“Venture Capital SeaStarFriends Limited Partnership,” Oliver said with a triumphant smile, “incorporated on May 25, 1998. The general partner is Vincent Isaac Levy, and the limited partner is Mr. Sergio Ignazio Vitali.”

“My God,” Alex whispered, “I can’t believe it.”

“MPM is owned by Levy and Vitali,” Oliver said.

“Then Zack isn’t working for himself. He’s working for them.” Alex felt miserable all of a sudden. Vincent Levy and Sergio Vitali made gigantic, risk-free profits through this fake company using insider information that she delivered to them! She didn’t even have to look for the individual stock purchases—she was certain that MPM always bought before a merger or acquisition was publicly announced. Sergio must have made millions, if not billions, over the past few months! Rage rose within her. Sergio had been using her the whole time. Now she understood his attempt at reconciliation the night he was shot, as well as his marriage proposal: he was afraid that his golden goose would fly off if she left him. Worst of all, she didn’t know what to do with this discovery. No one would believe that she hadn’t a clue about MPM and SeaStarFriends. She was Sergio’s lover. People would obviously think that she was an accomplice.

“That’s exactly what Shanahan did,” Oliver observed, but Alex didn’t respond. He had been right the whole time!

“If there’s one of these companies,” Mark pointed out, “then there are probably more like it. And if LMI invests in them with its own funds, then that means Levy and Vitali profit. Tax free.”

Alex felt a chill. Sergio and Levy started SeaStarFriends right when she joined LMI. They had profited from her deals from the very beginning. But in contrast to Shanahan, who knew what he was doing, she wasn’t privy to the situation. Sergio had lied to her in every respect.

“What are they doing with all this dough?” Justin threw out. “I mean, what do you need all those millions for?”

“If you have one million, then you want two,” Oliver replied. “If you have two, then you want ten; and if you have ten, you want a hundred. The greed of some people is virtually insatiable.”

“This setup is almost perfect,” Mark observed. “Really, we should admire anyone who could come up with this.”

“That’s true,” Oliver said, “and it’s absolutely safe for the people pulling the strings. If one of these companies goes bust, then you can hardly trace it back to whoever is behind it. The authorities are busy enough. If one of the trails leads to an offshore financial center, they’ll simply drop it and keep going after little guys they can catch in their own country.”

“Nevertheless,” Alex said, trying to maintain her composure, although she was boiling inside, “Justin’s question is valid. I’d also love to find out what they’re doing with all this money. Vitali already has everything that money can buy. There must be another reason why he’s doing this.”

“What do you mean?” Oliver cast her a probing glance, but Alex didn’t answer. She suddenly remembered a conversation that she’d overheard during the charity event at the Plaza. The wife of New York’s building commissioner told Vincent Levy’s wife that they had been vacationing in the Caymans at Sergio’s expense. Did Sergio repay McIntyre for a favor in this way?

“Justin,” Alex asked, “could you get into the computer of Levy & Villiers in Georgetown on Grand Cayman?”

“I can try,” he said.

“What do you expect to find?” Oliver asked in surprise.

“Maybe nothing,” Alex said, “but maybe material that will secure your Pulitzer Prize.”

Oliver grinned, but Justin’s face turned grim after a few minutes.

“I need a specific password in order to get into the network on the Caymans,” he said.

“Why’s that? Do they use a different operating system?” Mark asked.

“It’s an added safety feature.” Justin shrugged his shoulders. “The computer isn’t linked to the one in New York.”

He went to work at a different computer.

Eventually, he said, “Let’s grab some food. If we’re lucky, CryptCrack will hack the password by the time we’re back.”

“What the hell is that?” Mark wanted to know.

“CryptCrack,” Justin said, “is a password-hacking program that I recently developed. Now I can test it in real circumstances.”

They left the computer alone with this Herculean task and went to the MIT cafeteria, located in a different building on the campus. They were starving after so many tense hours in the basement.

Mary Kostidis sighed. Even though he didn’t say anything, more and more she could feel the enormous pressure weighing on her husband. Vitali Junior’s death, the hostilities in the press, and this strange terrorist—all of this strained his nerves. At last night’s dinner for the Canadian ambassador, Nick was his old entertaining, charming, and relaxed self for a while. However, when Mary later went into his office—where he had disappeared with Ray Howard—she could tell from his expression that something else had happened. She asked him about it afterward, but he simply dismissed her question.

In the past, Nick had involved her in his life. They discussed their problems with each other, and he’d asked for her opinion. But during the last few months, something had changed between them. For the first time in their long marriage, Mary Kostidis didn’t know what her husband was dealing with. Why was he hiding important things from her? When she stepped out on the terrace last night, she had thought for a brief, crazy moment that there could possibly be another woman in his life. Mary noticed how her husband looked at Alex Sontheim, the beautiful and highly intelligent banker. The expression on his face caused a painful sting in her heart. For as long as she’d known him, he had never given her such an enraptured and fascinated look. Had Nick fallen in love with her? Without a doubt, Alex was an extraordinary woman: successful, independent, and exceptionally sharp. She was beautiful, but she was also Sergio Vitali’s lover. Was that possibly the reason why he had invited her? Did Nick think that he could finally get to his archenemy through Alex? Or was there more behind it?

The morning was still fresh, but the heat would become unbearable in a few hours. The months of July and August were intolerable in the city, which is why many New Yorkers who could afford to spent their time in the countryside or near the ocean did so. Nick Kostidis sat in the office at Gracie Mansion with his assistants Frank Cohen and Ray Howard, something they often did on Sunday mornings. After a light breakfast, they discussed important issues for which they rarely had time otherwise. Frank read the agenda for the imminent visit of a Korean delegation, and Nick watched out the window as Christopher and Britney loaded their luggage into their black BMW. He was glad that they were taking Mary with them for a while. The way that things were developing here, it seemed better for to get her out of the city for a few days. Especially considering the second threatening letter. Frank vehemently insisted on getting Nick more security, but he didn’t tell Mary any of this. There were some things he preferred to keep to himself to avoid unnecessarily upsetting his wife. Mary had been nervous, even depressed in recent months. Time and again, Nick caught her staring absentmindedly out the window. She was usually bursting with energy, but now she seemed to be collapsing like a withered flower. He feared that she was sick, but none of the doctors could explain her condition. They advised him to shield her from any worries and show her more attention. But he missed exchanging ideas with Mary. For so many years, she had accepted the idea that his work had priority without complaining. Now, in her weakened state, he decided not to bother her with his worries.

It had been difficult for him to maintain his fearless and strong demeanor recently, because he felt increasingly discouraged and depressed. Things had gotten worse because he secretly longed for a woman other than his own wife. Nick couldn’t explain his fascination for Alex Sontheim, but there wasn’t a single day that he didn’t think about her. Yesterday evening, he’d noticed with a racing heart that her open aversion toward him had given way to a cautious sympathy. Maybe it would have been better not to invite her after all.

“I think they’re having problems with the car,” Frank observed and pulled Nick from his thoughts. “It looks like it’s not starting.”

“Let me take a look.” Nick stood up. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

“The alternator is dead,” Christopher Kostidis announced as his father stepped into the parking lot. Carey Lhota shrugged his shoulders and stepped back from the open hood.

“Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about it,” the chauffeur apologized.

“Too bad,” Mary said. “Now we have to postpone our departure for a few hours.”

“We can’t fix it that fast.” Christopher was annoyed as he looked under the hood. “Especially on a Sunday.”

“Well,” Nick said with a grin, “if you drove a solid American car, then…”

“Then it’d also take time to get a new alternator,” Christopher proudly defended his BMW.

“Why don’t you take my car,” Nick suggested. “Carey can bring the BMW to the repair shop tomorrow.”

“But you still need the car,” Mary objected.

“I can ride with Frank or Ray.” Nick shook his head. “That’s no problem.”

“I hope you’re not riding around town on the subway?” Mary looked at her husband with concern.

“No, I know you don’t like when I do that.” Nick laughed and put an arm around his wife’s waist.

“I’d really like to leave before it occurs to the rest of New York to go to Long Island.” Christopher looked at his watch.

“Come on!” Nick called. “Reload your luggage.”

Mary took his hand.

“Can’t you come with us for a few days?” she asked. Nick smiled and touched her face with both of his hands.

“You know what I was just thinking?” he said quietly. “I actually thought about coming out to Montauk on Friday.”

“Really?” Mary looked at her husband incredulously. “And your work?”

“I’ll arrange it somehow.” He kissed her.

“You promise?” Mary suddenly seemed genuinely happy.

“Yes, I promise. I’m looking forward to it.”

“We’re ready to go, Mom!” Christopher called. Britney was already sitting in the limousine’s passenger seat.

“I love you, Nick,” Mary whispered. “Take good care of yourself!”

“What the heck are they doing?”

Raymond Howard looked out the window and saw Christopher Kostidis sitting behind the wheel of the limousine. His face suddenly turned as white as a sheet.

“What’s going on?” Frank asked his colleague in surprise.

“My God, no. They must not under any circumstance…” Howard fell silent. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He saw Mary Kostidis kissing her husband good-bye. Christopher waved impatiently and called out something, while Britney Edwards sat in the passenger seat and smiled.

“Shit!” Howard cursed and charged out the door as if being chased by furies. Frank didn’t understand what was happening. Howard ran down the long corridor as fast as he could. The limousine had just rolled out of the parking lot as he jumped down the stairs. Mary and Britney waved from the open windows. Howard saw Nick smile and wave. He saw the dark blue car and ran after it, without regard for what his boss thought about him.

“Stop!” he screamed, running after the car with wildly waving arms. “Stop! Stop at once! Get out of the car, right now!”

When Justin got back to his desk, he found that CryptCrack had actually done its job, and he laughed like a little boy. He rubbed his hands and turned his gaze toward the screen. For a while, he seemed to forget everything around him. Just Oliver and Alex returned to MIT’s basement with Justin. During their meal, they’d decided that Mark should fly back to New York. Although Alex hadn’t eaten anything since the evening at Gracie Mansion, she couldn’t manage more than half a sandwich. Her stomach was tied in knots, and not just because of Oliver’s probing glance, directed at her every now and then. What should she do if her suspicion was confirmed? How could she keep working at a firm that was involved in such illegal business? And how could she ever get rid of Sergio? She felt trapped, controlled by these people.

“There’s a high security area in the Levy & Villiers computer,” Justin said suddenly, startling Alex out of her thoughts. “There’s nothing unusual here at first sight, but some files are ultrasecure.”

“Can you get into them?” Oliver asked and Justin nodded. Except for the clicking of the keyboard, it was completely quiet in the office. Mark’s presence had neutralized the tension between them, but now it was back again and any levity had disappeared.

“Weird,” Justin said after a while, “these are just anonymous numbered accounts.”

“Let me see,” Oliver and Alex said at the same time, looking over Justin’s shoulder.

Alex explained to Justin how people opened numbered accounts. Anywhere in the world, the client needed to present proof of identity to the bank. But after that, the account was given a number or fictitious name known only to the client and the bank’s employee. Clients were protected from detection by the authorities—at least at banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, or the Caribbean. These banks provided the utmost discretion and lured individuals with wealth of questionable origin. The Bahamas and the Caymans attracted many people who didn’t want to travel as far as Europe to evade taxation or the judicial authorities.

“What are you hoping to find?” Oliver asked curiously.

“Some kind of evidence of what they do with the money,” Alex replied. “MPM wasn’t created for their personal enrichment. Neither Levy nor Vitali needs to make money from insider trading. They’re wealthy enough already. There’s another reason why they’re doing this, and I want to find that out.”

Nick Kostidis turned around in surprise as his assistant charged down the stairs, screaming and waving. Nick registered the expression of terror and panic on Howard’s face, but he didn’t understand why this man—who was usually casual, cynical—was behaving this way. Howard was completely beside himself, chasing after the dark-blue car. Christopher seemed to have spotted him in the rearview mirror because he slowed down the car.

All of a sudden, Nick was overcome by a terrible premonition, and he instinctively also started to run. He saw Mary’s confused face through the car window as her smile vanished. Howard had just touched the door handle when a bright darting flame sparked from the limousine’s front hood; the car’s hood catapulted several yards into the air like a toy. Just a split second later, an enormous explosion shocked the car and ripped it to pieces.

Not comprehending what was happening in front of his eyes, Nick saw the explosive flame. The shock wave of the explosion, which even shattered some of the house windows, blew him off his feet and tossed him against the wall. Dazed and shocked, Nick crawled on all fours toward the burning inferno that the bomb had left behind on this peaceful Sunday morning.

“Mary!” he screamed. “Oh my God, no! Mary! Mary!”

Frank Cohen appeared in the door and stared uncomprehendingly at this horrific image. Nick had crawled to within a few yards of the burning car, and Frank ran after him without thinking about his own safety. At that moment, the fuel tank exploded, and Frank jumped on his boss, who screamed as if he’d lost his mind. Nick hardly noticed Frank holding him back. He struggled, kicked his legs, and screamed like a mortally wounded animal. He was close to jumping into the flames, although it was too late to save anyone. The three people in the car were long dead. Nick saw Howard stumbling around the burning lawn like a living torch, and white flames were hurling up from the glowing red car wreck into the branches of an old chestnut tree.

“Mary!” he screamed madly. “Mary! Mary! Oh my God, NO!”

Nick didn’t feel the scorching heat burning his skin. He didn’t notice that a glowing piece of metal had pierced his arm. He felt no pain, only horror—abysmally cruel horror. The blast of the two explosions had startled the security officers. Devastated, they gazed at the burning pile that had just been an armored limousine. One of the men had the presence of mind to aim a fire extinguisher at Howard as he collapsed on the charred grass, his body jerking and curling up into a ball.

Carey Lhota lay unconscious at the bottom of the stairs—the blast had thrown him and smashed his head against the steps. The air was filled with dense smoke and the smell of gasoline and burned flesh. The glowing firestorm had burned all the flowers, and the branches of the massive chestnut were now ablaze. Wreckage was scattered everywhere, and the grass on the lawn had turned to gray ash.

The staff of Gracie Mansion ran outside and looked in shock at this horrible scene that resembled a plane crash. Nick had stopped fighting. He lay on the ground, sobbing, with his burned fingers clawed into the ground; he kept stammering his wife’s and son’s names. Blood ran over his face and poured out of a deep wound on his left arm. He couldn’t take his gaze off the burning wreck in which his entire family had died before his eyes.

“Get him away from here!” Frank yelled at the security officers. “Move it! Take him inside the house!”

Someone had called the fire department, and several fire trucks with loudly wailing sirens now sped through the park ahead of police cars and an ambulance. Frank Cohen’s entire body shook. He was incapable of comprehending what had just taken place. The threatening letters were serious. Someone had just tried to kill Nick Kostidis, but they got his family instead.

And Ray… Frank’s gaze was filled with terror as it wandered to the burned figure. Ray had known it! He was the mole that Nick was looking for. Frank’s legs caved beneath him. He sank to the ground and groped for his broken glasses as mayhem broke out around him. Firefighters, police, paramedics, and security officers screamed at each other. The water hoses were unrolled, but it was too late—much too late—after the water and foam finally extinguished the flames.

“According to the latest report, Nick Kostidis was not in the vehicle when the bomb exploded at ten after eleven this morning at Gracie Mansion,” the visibly shocked TV reporter said. “Although there are no official reports yet, it appears that at least three individuals have lost their lives in the explosion. According to unconfirmed sources, the victims are the mayor’s wife, his son, and his son’s fiancée. An unidentified man with serious burns was rushed to the burn unit at Columbia Presbyterian…”

Sergio stared at the TV with a straight face. He slowly turned to the two men standing silently behind him.

“You screwed it up.” His voice was as cold as a glacier, and there was a deep crease of displeasure between his eyes. “What good is it to us if his wife and son are dead?”

Luca and Silvio looked down at the ground in embarrassment.

“Fucking hell!” Sergio suddenly screamed. “Am I surrounded by amateurs? Who had this idiotic idea of a car bomb?”

“Howard called us,” Luca eventually said. “First we planned to kill him on his way to the subway, but then Howard told us that he would take the limousine from now on for security reasons. A car bomb seemed to be the safest bet.”

“The safest thing would have been to put a bullet into this bastard’s head,” Sergio interrupted him angrily. “God damn it!”

“But then it wouldn’t have looked like an accident,” Silvio countered. “And you said—”

The telephone rang.

“I know what I said!” Sergio snarled at him. “A bomb doesn’t exactly look like an accident either!”

He signaled Luca to pick up the telephone.

“It’s Mr. van Mieren,” Luca said, and Sergio grabbed the phone. Nelson had been in Las Vegas since yesterday.

“I’m watching the news right now,” Nelson said, not wasting time to say hello. “I hope you’ve got nothing to do with this.”

“With what?”

“The bomb attack on the mayor.”

“Why would you think I had something to do with it?” Sergio controlled his anger, acting surprised.

“Because you just recently talked about getting Kostidis out of the way.”

“He’s got a lot of enemies in this city besides me.”

“I wish I believed you, Sergio.” Nelson sighed. “I’ve never questioned anything that you’ve done before. But this time I’ll only ask you once, and for our long friendship’s sake, I’m asking you to tell me the truth.”

“Is there someone with you?” Sergio asked warily.

Nelson was speechless for a moment. How could he be suspicious?

“Of course not,” he replied in irritation. “I’m calling from a secure telephone, and I’m alone. So?”

Sergio didn’t hesitate to take advantage of his oldest friend’s trust.

“I had nothing to do with the attack,” he said in a calm voice. “When I said to get Kostidis out of the way, I didn’t think about anything like this.”

Nelson wasn’t quite convinced, but he also had a hard time believing that Sergio would lie to him. After their conversation, Sergio turned to Luca and Silvio.

“Nelson mustn’t find out that we were involved in this. And it’s better if Massimo doesn’t know about it either.”

The two men nodded silently. They were relieved that their boss had seemed to come to terms with the botched operation.

“Okay,” Sergio said, “this one went wrong. The next time we’ll be more successful.”

The telephone rang again, and Luca picked up.

“It’s St. John,” he said. Sergio took the call. His face darkened noticeably while he listened, and then he hung up. Raymond Howard was dead. The loss of this important informer was more painful to Sergio than the failed assassination. Howard had been supplying him with invaluable information straight from the mayor’s office over the past several years. But Sergio Vitali tended not to worry about what he couldn’t change. Kostidis’s days were numbered anyway. Once the mayor was dead, he wouldn’t need a mole to spy on him anymore.

It was ten at night when Justin succeeded in penetrating the secret numbered accounts file at Levy & Villiers on Grand Cayman. Alex, Oliver, and Justin looked through countless accounts. Although many of them would have been interesting for the US tax authorities, the ones that Alex hoped to find were not among them. Justin eventually came across an extremely secure file that instantly aroused his curiosity. It took him almost an hour and a half to successfully hack it. The silence in the small room was thick enough to cut with a knife. The ashtray overflowed. Soda cans, empty packs of chips, and chocolate bar wrappers gathered around Justin’s revolving chair.

“Fucking hell,” he said quietly. “I’ve actually done it! We’re in!”

His eyes were glowing, and he grinned triumphantly. It was a tricky affair, yet he’d found a way to crack into the highly secure file.

“The guys in this joint really know their stuff when it comes to data security,” he said with honest admiration for his counterparts.

Alex and Oliver, who were about to fall asleep after several long hours in the cold fluorescent light of the basement office, jerked to attention.

“I think I found what you’re looking for,” said Justin, and Alex moved her chair next to his. She stared at the screen and couldn’t believe her eyes. The bankers on Grand Cayman had meticulously listed the account numbers and code names together with the dates the accounts were opened. These were followed by the name of the account holder and the address.

“What’s this?” Oliver asked. Alex didn’t answer.

“Is it normal to list addresses and names?” Justin asked.

“It’s not unusual,” Alex said, “because the bank is bound to secrecy by law. As you can see, it’s impossible to stumble upon this data. It seems pretty secure to me.”

She scanned an account statement with the code name “Amazed” that listed Mr. Frederick P. Hoffman as its owner. To her surprise, there were no investment funds or stock portfolios, just regular cash deposits in staggering amounts.

“What’s this?” Oliver urged curiously.

“Exactly what I was afraid to find.” Alex looked at him. “Bribes paid to numbered accounts.”

Oliver’s eyes widened and Alex turned toward the screen again.

“Senator Fred Hoffman,” she said. “I know him!”

His account had a balance of 1.8 million dollars. Tax free, illegal, paid in cash.

“Anyone else?” Justin asked as his fingers hovered over the keyboard.

“Zachary St. John,” Alex replied and nervously rubbed the moist palms of her hands together. Justin typed in his name, and seconds later the account statement appeared.

“Code name: Goldfinger.” Justin grinned.

“Typical,” Alex said in a mocking tone. She was astonished to see how much Zack had amassed over the years. The staggering cash deposits took away Alex’s breath. Zack didn’t fool around! The balance of his account was a respectable twenty-two million dollars.

“Unbelievable.” She shook her head. For the next two hours, they worked through all fifty-four of the secret accounts at Levy & Villiers in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. And what they found pointed to one of the biggest corruption cases of all time. They came across the names of Governor Robert Landford Rhodes; John de Lancie, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York; David Norman, a board member of the NYSE; and Jerome Harding, New York’s police commissioner. Greg Tarrance was a high-ranking administrator at the SEC’s enforcement division. Alex knew his name because it had appeared time and again in connection with investigations. Senator Hoffman was only one of many politicians who helped themselves to tax-free additional income. The deposits to all the accounts always occurred on the same day and were always in cash.

Alex slowly started to understand what was going on. She couldn’t help but admire whoever had come up with this simple yet ingenious system. Every time Alex told St. John about an imminent deal, he ordered the broker Jack Lang to buy stock of the company that was subject to a merger or acquisition for MPM. Once the stock price skyrocketed due to the public announcement of the deal, Lang sold the stock, and the proceeds of the sale were transported to Grand Cayman in cash, probably by St. John himself. With one of Vitali’s private jets, they could easily circumvent customs. This method of raising funds was highly illegal, but they were protected by high-ranking judges, US attorneys, SEC administrators, and NYSE board members on their bribery payroll. If there were transgressions, no one was interested in investigating any further.

Alex vividly remembered PBA Steel. No wonder Sergio didn’t worry about the SEC. The investigation had fizzled out after just two days, with no resolution. Sergio had bribed the most influential men of the city and state, his connections reaching as far as Washington DC. His “friends” were in Congress, the Senate, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Defense. With these accounts, he had wonderful leverage against them. Passive corruption by itself was ruinous for a politician or public officer, but not paying taxes on this income was highly punishable as tax fraud.

“Some of them get ten grand a month.” Justin was amazed. “This one doesn’t seem to be as important. He only gets three.”

Alex’s eyes fell on the name, and she froze. Raymond Howard. Alex remembered the man with the thin blond hair whom she’d seen at the Plaza for the first time and then at Gracie Mansion last night. He was the man Nick Kostidis was looking for! Nick suspected that there was an informer on his staff, but he had no idea that it was one of his most trusted employees. And then she remembered where else she had seen him. He was with Zack at Luna Luna that evening when she’d celebrated the Maxxam deal with her staff. Raymond Howard knew Zack! Now that she was aware of it, she needed to tell Nick. She couldn’t possibly leave him in the dark any longer.

“What are you going to do now?” Justin asked as they left the Media Lab building feeling drained sixteen hours after their arrival. Outside it was dawn, and the birds chirped in the trees. Justin had printed the entire dossier, and Alex carried it in her briefcase. She felt like she had pure explosives under her arm.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I don’t feel like making myself a target. If Vitali finds out that I know about these secret accounts, he’ll kill me.”

Justin stared at her.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Absolutely,” Alex said, nodding, “this isn’t petty embezzlement. This is an elaborate web of bribes, and I’m in the middle of it. As of today, I can’t claim that I don’t know anything about this.”

They reached the nearly empty parking lot and squeezed into Justin’s dusty Nissan. Justin dropped them off at the airport a half hour later. Oliver and Alex thanked him for his incredibly helpful work and promised to keep him posted. Without saying a word, they entered the departure terminal and inquired about the next flight to New York. They reserved two seats for the 6:20 a.m. flight and then walked to the coffee shop, where only a few early travelers and the crew of a Far East airline were passing the time.

Alex realized that Oliver would have liked to talk about something entirely different, but she couldn’t get her thoughts off the findings of the past few hours. She no longer had a future in New York. They silently drank their coffee and chewed on doughnuts while Alex stared at the TV, which was tuned to CNN. Suddenly, she dropped her coffee cup. The blood drained from her face when she realized what the reporter was talking about. She jumped up and ran to the bar.

“Could you please turn it up a little?” she asked the waitress. The woman grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume. Aghast, Alex listened to the reporter.

“Initial investigations by the FBI’s explosives experts indicate that the bomb was placed under the hood of the mayor’s armored limousine. Kostidis’s wife Mary, his son Christopher, and his son’s fiancée Britney Edwards were killed in this attack. Another man who attempted to save the three individuals from the flames suffered severe burns and succumbed to his injuries one hour later at Columbia Presbyterian. Mayor Kostidis, the alleged target of this assassination attempt, was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital. No details have yet been disclosed about his condition.”

“Oh my God!” Alex whispered. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she felt sick. It couldn’t be true! She had just talked to Mary and Christopher Kostidis so recently. And now they were dead? Oliver stood up and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I was at Gracie Mansion on Saturday evening,” Alex said, her whole body shaking, “and now they’re dead! I can’t believe it!”

Oliver held her a little tighter in his arms. The television showed images from the lawn at Gracie Mansion, and Alex saw the smoldering remnants of the car. The power of the detonation had torn the heavy limousine into two pieces, making the lawn look like a battlefield.

“Excuse me.” Alex freed herself from Oliver’s arms and ran out to the restroom. Tears poured down her face as she sat sobbing on the floor of the closed bathroom stall. Nick Kostidis had publicly voiced dangerous allegations after Cesare’s death and the attempt on Sergio. She admired him for his courage, but now she realized that this had to be the reason for the attack. The mayor had come too close to the truth and become a risk for Sergio Vitali.

Alex pressed her face into her hands. This brutal man had proposed marriage to her just a few days ago! She wiped the tears from her cheeks. Nick Kostidis had asked for her help a number of times, but she’d refused because she was afraid of the consequences. She’d been too big a coward, and now Nick’s family had been cruelly annihilated. Alex closed her eyes. Wasn’t she also to blame? She had known since last summer that David Zuckerman had been killed on Sergio’s order. If she had told Nick at the time, everything might have turned out differently. Or not? She felt more miserable than she ever had in her life. She gradually realized the far-reaching consequences of her discovery, and she almost regretted her curiosity. This was no longer about lies and hurt pride. If she used her knowledge, undeniably triggering an enormous scandal, then more than just her job would be on the line. Sergio wouldn’t sit idly by while his empire wavered, and she knew exactly what he was capable of. She was scared, terribly scared. And there was no one who could help her.

The flight from Boston landed at eight thirty. Oliver and Alex took a cab together to Manhattan.

“What are you going to do now?” Oliver asked in concern.

“I can’t do anything,” Alex replied. Fear had overcome her. She made sure that the dividing glass to the driver was closed, but she still whispered.

“I know that Sergio had David Zuckerman killed last summer, and that he ordered the assassination attempt on Kostidis. If he finds out that I have the slightest idea, then I’m dead.”

Oliver gave her a perplexed stare.

“I have to keep playing along and try to maneuver myself out of this mess by making bad deals. And I’ve got another idea.”

“What are you going to do with these documents?”

“I’ll put them in a safety-deposit box at some bank.”

“Let me take care of that,” Oliver said, grabbing her hand.

“No.” She vehemently shook her head. “I don’t want anything else to happen to you. I have to fight this war by myself.”

They looked at each other in silence.

“Thanks,” Alex whispered when the taxi stopped in front of her building.

“Please take care of yourself, Alex,” Oliver said seriously, “and call me soon. We’ll find a solution together.”

She nodded and quickly kissed his cheek before she got out. Just the thought that Sergio owned the apartment in which she lived filled her with horror. After she took a shower and got dressed, she pushed the printouts of the numbered accounts beneath the TV.

On her way to the subway, she bought a paper and came across a small article on the fifth page while riding downtown. One of the journalists wondered why Syncrotron had filed for bankruptcy yesterday as there’d been noticeably active trading in Syncrotron shares recently. “The question remains,” Alex read with a grim smile, “who would buy shares of a company such as Syncrotron that apparently had liquidity issues and no future. At the very least, this small manufacturer of circuit boards that became a total bust (due to incompetent management and lack of innovation) will turn into a nightmare today for these daring investors.”

Alex folded the newspaper. Zack should know by now that MPM was sitting on a pile of worthless stock. She didn’t think that the company would get into any serious trouble because the stock purchases were likely fully financed by LMI or even personally by Sergio. There would be no callback where the borrowed money would have to be returned, which is what happened every now and then when a speculator placed a wrong bet. Nevertheless, it was possible that the SEC would initiate an investigation. It was very unusual for someone to accumulate such a large position in a company known to be on the brink of bankruptcy. This absolutely smelled like insider trading. Alex wished that she could hole up somewhere. The lack of sleep and the terrible news about the bomb had her depressed, and she didn’t feel up to the challenge of an imminent confrontation with Sergio or Zack. The clarity with which she saw her situation was frightening, paralyzing. Just one small mistake on her part could have fatal consequences.

At nine thirty, Alex paced through the blue-tiled Wall Street subway station to the escalators. She could hardly believe that life continued as if nothing had happened. In light of her discoveries and the tragedy, it seemed that everything should be different now. But in the bright Monday-morning sunlight, the city seemed as busy as ever. Alex saw her secretary standing near the glass door at the entrance of the trading floor. She’d been desperately waiting for her.

“Alex!” she called in relief and ran toward her. “Finally! The telephone’s ringing off the hook! And Mr. St. John is waiting for you in your office. He’s really pissed off!”

“Thanks, Marcia,” Alex replied. The familiar environment helped her cope with her confusion. She crossed the trading floor and nodded to the traders, who were yelling and wildly gesticulating on the telephone as usual. She flung open the glass door to her office with élan. Zack, who’d been wandering around nervously, quickly turned around.

“Where the hell have you been all weekend?” he yelled furiously. “Why don’t you answer your cell phone?”

“Good morning, Zack,” Alex replied, pretending to be calm. “I was in the country. Did something happen?”

“What’s going on with Syncrotron?”

“Syncrotron?” Alex feigned astonishment. Zack’s face was as white as a ghost. He had dark circles under his eyes. There was nothing left of his arrogance and pride.

“Yes, damn it! Are you deaf?”

“Why are you so upset?” Alex sat down and began to look through the phone messages Marcia had placed neatly on her desk.

“Here!” Zack slammed the newspaper that she’d already read on the table, sending her notes flying. He poked his finger at the article about Syncrotron’s bankruptcy so hard it seemed he wanted to pierce the tabletop. She shot a quick glance at the newspaper.

“What idiot would buy stock in this company?” she said calmly. Zack went speechless, and his face turned bright red.

“But… but… you…” he stammered, then gave her an uncomprehending look. Alex had never mentioned a single word about Syncrotron. He had just found a note on her desk and plans for an LBO in her computer.

“I what?” Alex looked at him with her eyebrows raised, but on the inside she felt triumphant. Zack had stepped right into her trap without even checking the facts about Syncrotron, as any proper banker should have done. He stared at her with a murderous rage.

“Why are you even upset?” Alex forced herself to smile. “We’re in no way involved with Syncrotron.”

That was too much for Zack. He was so full of anger that he couldn’t even think straight anymore.

“You worked on an LBO for Syncrotron!” It burst out of him. “I know for sure! The numbers looked good, and it seemed like a safe bet!”

“Why would I have prepared an LBO for a company that was sure to go bankrupt soon? That would have been a total waste of time.” Alex shook her head unsympathetically. “What makes you think that?”

“I… I’ve… I’m…” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hands and then took a deep breath. “I saw the papers on your desk.”

Alex couldn’t believe that he actually admitted to it.

“If I understand you correctly, you snooped around in my desk,” she said. “Apart from that blatant lack of respect, I have to tell you that…”

She paused and then slapped her hand against her forehead as if something had just occurred to her.

“Ahh, now I know what you’re talking about!” she said. “I had a new potential client. It’s already been a couple of months; I think that I even told you about it. I did actually prepare some numbers for them. I just replaced their real name with an alias. Maybe I picked Syncrotron.”

Zack looked as if he would faint at any second.

“I do that frequently.” Alex smiled. “After all, I don’t want everyone to know right away what I’m working on.”

Zack fell into the chair in front of her desk and ran all ten fingers through his hair.

“I can’t believe you snooped around my desk—”

“Damn it!” Zack hissed, interrupting Alex. “Such stupid shit! You assign different names to your clients? That’s the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Why are you so upset?” Alex acted dismayed. “It’s my decision how I code my projects.”

Zack’s gaze wandered through the office aimlessly. This is how desperate investors must have looked after the crash on Black Monday, when they heard that they’d become penniless overnight.

“I see.” Alex looked at him closely. “Don’t tell me that you’ve speculated on your own account? And you got smoked.”

She leaned back.

“Did you actually invest in other deals I told you about? That’s called insider trading.”

“I could wring your neck,” he hissed through his clenched teeth. Then he jumped up and left her office. The smile vanished from Alex’s face. His fury removed any lingering doubts. Zack hadn’t shied away from breaking into her computer and rifling through her desk in order to find out what she was working on. She was part of a huge scheme, and that was the irrevocable truth.

Alex gathered the messages and started to sort them. Sergio had tried to reach her. She had to call him now for tactical reasons, even though every part of her being opposed it. Since this morning, her aversion had turned to pure fear. She needed to pretend that she was outraged about Zack’s illegal dealings and his breach of trust. She needed to act normally. Under any circumstances, she couldn’t raise Sergio’s suspicions.

After the bombing, a wave of compassion washed over the population—even those who didn’t support Nick Kostidis and his policies sincerely grieved for the mayor’s family. Countless people placed bouquets of flowers at the gate of Gracie Mansion and city hall. They lit candles and waited patiently in the sweltering summer heat to sign one of the condolence books. The bombing had been the feature story on TV and radio stations nationwide for the past ten days. Even the tiniest development was extensively covered. Wild speculation about the bombers’ motives circulated in the media, but little progress was made in getting to the truth. Outside city hall and Mount Sinai Hospital, concerned citizens and reporters waited patiently for news about the mayor’s health. All of the city’s churches and synagogues held services for the victims of the attack.

Frank Cohen had lived through the worst ten days of his life. Since that fateful Sunday morning, he had been peppered with questions from all directions about the incident at Gracie Mansion. Although he wasn’t an eyewitness, agents and officers of the FBI, the NYPD, and the Department of State asked him the same questions over and over. Did Nick Kostidis have enemies? Of course he did—what a stupid question! Any man in his position had enemies. With his blunt candor, Nick had inevitably stepped on some toes.

The worst thing about the endless questioning was that Frank actually knew who was behind this attack, but he couldn’t say a word until he had spoken to Nick. Filled with horror, he recalled the sight of Raymond Howard. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the man’s badly burned face. The explosion had ripped off both of his hands. It would have been more merciful if he had died right away.

When the security officers rushed Nick into the house after the bomb went off, Frank rushed to Howard’s side. Just five minutes before, Ray Howard had been a good-looking man with a fit body, but now he was a horrific sight. His hair, his eyebrows—everything was burned. His skin looked as if it had shrunk. Ray looked like a mummy, but he was still alive. Despite his disgust, Frank leaned over him as the paramedic carefully wrapped the burned body in aluminum foil. Ray had extended what was left of his arm toward him, and the eyes in this cruelly disfigured face looked up at him in desperation. He tried over and over to tell him something before Frank finally understood. Ray was telling him who was responsible for the attack, but that was no surprise. The really shattering insight was that Ray Howard—who had been Frank’s colleague for six years and worked by his side almost every day—was the mole Nick had been so desperate to uncover.

Frank Cohen took on the difficult task of calling the relatives. He called Mary’s sister Maureen, her parents, and the parents of Britney Edwards. He talked to the shocked and crying staff at Gracie Mansion, and then he drove to city hall to take on a responsibility that weighed heavily on his shoulders. All he wanted to do was hole up somewhere and cry. He worshiped Nick Kostidis like a father and it grieved Frank enormously that he couldn’t help him. But he couldn’t afford to collapse. He had to stay strong—unlike Allie Mitchell and many other members of the mayor’s staff. Everyone at city hall was paralyzed in the days after the attack, wondering how they could possibly go on with their work. Official events were canceled, and all flags in New York City flew at half-mast. Hundreds of condolence calls and letters flooded into the mayor’s office each day. It was a small consolation that there were kind-hearted people in this cold, monstrous city. Although he usually shunned public appearances, Frank rose to the challenge. He spoke to the press, helped the deputy mayor put a crisis team together, and kept a level head. He helped clean up the debris from the explosion after the police had concluded their investigation. Not a trace remained of Sunday’s tragedy, which had wiped out four lives and possibly destroyed another one forever.

Vincent Levy and Sergio Vitali sat across from each other at La Côte Basque, a renowned French restaurant on West Fifty-Fifth Street. Levy felt the need to tell Sergio what went wrong with Syncotron after Alex clued him in. He would have preferred not to tell him, but new safety measures were in order that required discussion.

“Unfortunately, Zack acted the fool,” Levy concluded his remarks.

“This man is a weak link,” Sergio replied.

“Yes. Unfortunately. Especially when it comes to Alex Sontheim,” Levy confirmed. “Sometimes it almost seems like he’s jealous of her success.”

Sergio furrowed his brow in thought. Alex had been outraged when she called him, and he had to force himself to listen calmly and not scream at her. She was at Gracie Mansion as the mayor’s guest on Saturday night! Was she double-dealing? Why else hadn’t she told him about this invitation? What did she talk about with Kostidis? Did she know he was behind this bombing? He couldn’t afford to underestimate Alex under any circumstances. She was too clever. He couldn’t afford any mistakes, but at the moment, it seemed like she was provoking him to do exactly that. Because of St. John’s stupidity, she could be growing suspicious.

“We need something that we can use against her,” Levy contemplated, “but what?”

Sergio cleared his throat. He had been thinking about that for days. He knew that Levy was right.

“We’ll open an account in her name and deposit money from deals that she closes for LMI. We’ll book a flight in her name to the Bahamas, send a woman who looks like her, and once the account is open we’ll have leverage against her.”

“Hmm.” Levy pondered. “That sounds pretty good.”

Sergio reached into his inner jacket pocket.

“Here’s her passport,” he said. “I have too many things to deal with right now. Take care of St. John and see to it that things calm down. I don’t need any unnecessary problems right now.”

“But… I…” Levy hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Umm… I know that you and Alex… well… umm…”

“I bang her every now and then.” Sergio kept a straight face. “So what? That doesn’t mean that I’m taking any business risk because of it. Do what you have to do. You have my blessing.”

The hospital room was large and bright. It had a magnificent view across Central Park through the galvanized-steel wire mesh of the security windows, but Nick saw neither the green leaves nor the silvery shimmering lake. He sat slumped on a chair and stared aimlessly at the wall. His hands, with which he usually gestured so vividly, were bound and lay limply in his lap. The burn wounds on his face looked blood-red in comparison to the deathly pallor of his skin.

Frank Cohen fought back tears when he saw his boss. Whoever had killed Nick’s family with the intention of getting to him had achieved his goal. The Nick Kostidis Frank knew had died the second they turned to ash. Frank wanted to say something to console him, something compassionate and understanding—something that Nick might have said in such a situation—but he couldn’t think of anything.

“Hello,” Frank said timidly. Nick turned around slowly. Frank was shocked to see the dull, lifeless look in his bloodshot eyes. The burns and flesh wounds on his body would heal, but no one could possibly imagine the psychological scars.

“Frank.” Nick’s voice sounded coarse and strange. The drugs had put him into a numb, deadened state. “Christopher’s car wouldn’t start,” he suddenly said. “I suggested that they take my car. They didn’t want to leave too late because of the heat.”

Frank bit at his lip trying not to cry.

“I insisted. I couldn’t possibly have known…” Nick stopped and took an agonized breath. “They’re dead now. And it’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Frank objected quietly.

“Yes, it is. I didn’t take those letters seriously. I didn’t listen to Mary. It’s my fault that they had to die.”

Nick’s face was expressionless. He seemed neither desperate nor close to a nervous breakdown. He was completely devoid of emotion, which was terrifying.

“Ray was the mole I was looking for. He knew about the bomb in the car. He would have let me die, but he wanted to prevent my family from dying.”

Frank swallowed and fought his tears.

“Why? Why did he do that? I knew him for such a long time, and I trusted him.”

Frank didn’t know how to respond. He’d asked himself this very same question over and over again.

After he was alone again, Nick stood up and walked to the window with heavy steps. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes. If he had more strength, he would have tried to jump out the window. The strong sedatives prescribed by the doctors had put him in a semiconscious, trancelike state.

But the kind moment of numbness granted by the drugs seemed to be coming to a close. He was forced to face the brutal reality that slowly and frighteningly approached him like an all-encompassing black tidal wave. Mary was dead. Christopher was dead. His entire family had been extinguished in a few seconds, vanished forever. He didn’t even have the chance to say good-bye to their lifeless bodies because there was nothing left of the two people who meant the most to him in this world. As if in an endless, slow-motion loop, Nick saw Mary’s smile, her wave, and the look of panic in Raymond Howard’s eyes. And then he saw the bright spark of the flame and felt the incredible force of the explosion that ripped the heavy armored car into two pieces like a toy.

Desperately, Nick pressed his burned hands over his ears and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t dispel the noises and images in his head. And yet there was no sorrow in his heart, nor pain and anger—only emptiness and numbness. He could hear their voices when people talked to him. He saw their worry and compassion and knew that they wanted to help him, but what could they do? A torrential black river rushed between them, and this river was his guilt. There was no consolation, no salvation for him, because he was guilty of Mary’s and Christopher’s deaths. He’d gone too far with his obsession, and now he had to atone for it. He would have to live with this guilt for the rest of his life. Fate had spared him, but at what cost? Nick convulsed from the pain. His heart was as heavy as a rock, and he feared the day when he had to leave the protective walls of the hospital and look life in the eye again.

Frank burst into tears when he got into his car in the hospital’s parking garage. He pressed his forehead against the steering wheel and sobbed. If only he could do something for Nick, something that would relieve his pain and suffering! But there was nothing, no chance, because Nick wouldn’t allow it. He had shut down, he was lost inside of himself, and nothing, no one, could reach him. Suddenly, Frank stopped crying and lifted his head. Yes! There was someone who might be able to help! He remembered how much Nick admired his old friend, the Jesuit priest Kevin O’Shaughnessy of the St. Ignatius monastery in Brooklyn. The priest had once been a practicing doctor. Although Frank was completely exhausted, longing only for his bed after ten terrible days, he started the engine and drove out of the underground lot. He headed straight to Brooklyn. He knew he was grasping at straws, but perhaps this straw could save someone’s life.

“Zack, you know as well as I do that we need Alex!” Vincent Levy yelled in annoyance. “So stop sulking like a baby and control the damage that you’ve caused!”

“How dare she give her clients false names?” St. John clenched his fist in anger.

“How dare you snoop around on her desk and her computer and then admit it to her?” Levy countered angrily. Through a mistake like this, the entire lucrative scheme could blow up. Alex was too smart; her suspicion could have dangerous consequences.

“That dumb bitch,” Zack said. “I could—”

“You’re acting like a jealous prima donna,” Levy interrupted him harshly.

“I’m not jealous!” LMI’s managing director disputed.

“Whatever.” Levy glanced at his watch. “Given the circumstances, I think it’s appropriate to get some leverage against Alex.”

“Leverage?” Zack looked up in surprise.

“Yes.” The voice of LMI’s president sounded scornful. “Thanks to your hysterical reaction, she has cause for suspicion. And she’s intelligent enough to see through all of this.”

He opened his desk drawer, took out a German passport, and tossed it to Zack.

“That’s her passport. This afternoon, you’ll fly to Nassau with a young lady traveling under Alex’s name. You’ll help her open an account there at the local branch of the Teignier & Fils Swiss bank. Then you will deposit two hundred thousand dollars in cash and fly back again.”

Zack’s eyes widened, and then he grinned.

“That’s one hell of a plan. It sounds like something I’d come up with!”

Levy shrugged his shoulders and handed him two airline tickets.

“Perfect. That’s a great idea, Vince.” Zack rubbed his hands. His irritation was gone and felt back on top again.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Levy answered stiffly.

“I thought so.” Zack gave his boss a mocking look and then grabbed the tickets and passport. “You don’t have that much imagination.”

“Don’t forget why you are on LMI’s board. Another faux pas like this and you’ll be working in the mail room,” Levy said.

Zack’s face turned grim, and a hateful twinkle appeared in his eyes.

“By the way, Zack,” Levy said without a smile, “you’re flying to LA on Monday and will stay there until the dust has settled around here. We can’t afford to upset Alex.”

“As you wish, sir.” Zack faked a submissive bow. “I’ve heard that our esteemed M&A head has a meeting with Michael Whithers of Whithers Computers in Dallas next Thursday. This could turn out to be a huge deal if she doesn’t screw it up.”

“The only person screwing things up here,” Levy said coolly, “is you.”

Zack grimaced. Alex was in for the shock of her life, and so was this arrogant idiot Levy if he kept treating him in this demeaning manner. He had enough information to take them all down.

Father Kevin O’Shaughnessy didn’t hesitate for a second when Frank Cohen asked him for help. He had just returned from Europe the day before and had been thinking of paying his old friend a visit. At Mount Sinai, he learned that the doctors considered his visit the last attempt before they admitted their most prominent patient to the psychiatric unit. Nick sat on a chair by the window staring at his hands.

“Good evening, Nicholas,” Father Kevin said. Nick raised his head, and a spark of interest glimmered in his eyes, but it disappeared again at once.

“Good evening, Father,” he replied indifferently. The Jesuit priest’s heart grew heavy with sympathy when he realized what fate had done to this human being who had once been so fearless, so full of energy. A broken man sat in front of him. Horror and shock were visible in his dark eyes. Kevin O’Shaughnessy knew this expression all too well. He had seen it in the eyes of the many soldiers he’s seen return from Vietnam. Some of them were never able to overcome the trauma of war. They couldn’t forget the dead, the atrocities that they had witnessed. How much more terrible it must be to witness your own family’s death. What could he possibly say to a person who’d just suffered such a loss?

“Nicholas.” Father Kevin put his hand on the mayor’s shoulder, “Words can not express the deep sympathy that I feel for you, and how much I grieve for Mary and Christopher.”

Nick sighed.

“I want to help you. Tell me what I can do for you.”

“You can’t help me, Father.” Nick shook his head. “No one can.”

“God works in mysterious ways. Nothing happens without a reason on His earth.”

“What reason could there be to let three innocent people die?” Nick responded bitterly.

“Not one of us knows in the hour of death,” Father Kevin countered softly. “God has taken Mary and Christopher to His side because He thought it was right. Now they are with Him. But you must live on.”

“Must I?” Nick turned his face to the side. “It’s no consolation for me that they may be in heaven. I wonder whether there’s a God at all if He allows things like this to happen. Mary never harmed anyone, and still God allowed that she…that she…”

He stopped and wiped his bandaged hand across his face.

“Jesus Christ doubted in His hours of fear and hopelessness,” Father Kevin replied. “It’s human nature to have doubts. Everyone has them. If you don’t doubt, you can’t believe.”

“I don’t know if all of that is true. I don’t know anything. None of this makes sense anymore.” Nick looked at his old friend. “I wish that I had the courage to kill myself.”

Father Kevin looked at him seriously and then placed his hands on his shoulders.

“I remember this little boy,” he said in a low voice, “a boy I respected because he had courage. He had a grand vision that shone above his path like a bright star. This boy didn’t have an easy life. He had to witness the death of his mother, his father, and his brothers. But he never gave up. He never understood why his father gave up on himself. This boy fought for all of his life.”

Nick frowned.

“It’s not the same anymore,” he whispered. “I don’t have any strength left.”

“God will give you the strength to endure what He imposes on you. Even if you don’t understand at this moment how He let it happen that Mary and Christopher had to die.”

“No! There’s no consolation for this!” Nick replied vehemently. “Not for me! It’s my fault.”

“You should allow others to help you.” Father Kevin let him go and sat on the edge of the bed.

“They want me to talk about it,” Nick said, sounding agonized, “but I can’t. I don’t want to talk.”

“The doctors are very worried. And not only them. The entire city is grieving with you. The people waiting outside the hospital want you to get better because they love and trust you. You’ve become their role model, their guiding light.”

“No, no. I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want other people to expect something of me. I want…I…”

“They want to help you.”

“Damn it! What do they expect? Should I cry and scream and pull out my hair?”

“Yes.” Father Kevin nodded slowly. “I think that they expect something like that. They’re waiting for a reaction from you so they can see that you’ve overcome your shock.”

“I’m not in shock. I simply can’t cry! Everything is cold and dead inside of me.”

“Because you’re not allowing it. You’re afraid to lose control.”

Nick stood up and stepped toward the window.

“That may be,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Maybe I’m afraid of going crazy.”

Both men were silent. The blood-red sun set over the other side of the park, behind the apartment buildings on the west side. Nick breathed heavily. What good would it do to talk about the horror that he experienced over and over again? It wouldn’t change anything. No one could help him—not even God. How should he continue to live with the thought that he was solely responsible for the death of these three people? Why hadn’t he listened to Mary’s plea that he simply forget Vitali? He had achieved so much and celebrated many successes, but that wasn’t enough for him. Filled with arrogance, he thought he was invincible. Now fate had taught him otherwise. Vitali had taken from him what he had loved most in his life. And the punishment for his guilt was agony and loneliness. No, there was no solace. Not for him. But no one understood.

“I love the Lord,” Father Kevin said in a low voice, quoting the Bible, “who listened to my voice. Who turned an ear to me on the day I called. I was caught by the cords of death, the snares of hell had seized me; I felt agony and dread. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, save my life!’ Gracious is the Lord and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord protects the simple hearts.”

Nick heard the springs squeak as the old man raised himself from the edge of the bed. The Jesuit priest’s gaze was full of compassion, and he put his hand on Nick’s shoulder once again.

“You can come to me whenever you need to,” he said, “but don’t allow your heart to harden against God in anger.”

Nick remained silent.

“Don’t judge yourself more harshly than God would judge you,” the Father raised himself up again, “and the sun will also shine for you again. The Lord will help you in His mercy if you ask Him to.”

The head physician and his team were eagerly awaiting the Jesuit priest as he left the room.

“Did he speak to you?” Dr. Simmons asked.

“Yes,” Father Kevin O’Shaughnessy replied, “but don’t expect him to talk about the things that torment him. He’s never been one to speak of his feelings, not in all the forty years I’ve known him. It’s pointless to keep him here.”

“Are you suggesting we simply release him, even though he’s still in shock?”

“Yes.” Father Kevin nodded. “He’s going to be okay. I’m also a medical doctor with many years of experience treating traumatized people, especially soldiers returning from Vietnam. Nicholas Kostidis reminds me of those men. His behavior shows every symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder: a disturbed affect and a seeming lack of feeling. But just because he cannot express it does not mean grief is not roiling inside of him.”

The doctors looked at the priest in astonishment.

“But what about the suicide risk?” another senior physician said. “He mentioned several times that he wished he had the courage to kill himself.”

“He said that to me,” Father Kevin confirmed, “but I don’t take it seriously. A man like Nick Kostidis doesn’t tend to commit suicide. Although he’s still incapable of grieving, he couldn’t force himself to do that. But he blames himself for his family’s death. We won’t be able to talk him out of believing it.”

“Maybe it would be best to admit him to a—”

“For heaven’s sake!” Father Kevin interrupted the senior physician. “He’s not crazy! Give him time to accept his family’s death. The only thing that can help him now is time. He’ll come to terms with it one day. I’m sure of it.”

The three senior physicians were perplexed as they looked at each other.

“Okay, Father,” the head physician finally said. “We’ll release Mr. Kostidis on Tuesday. We should respect that he doesn’t want to talk about something that’s still so fresh and painful. Maybe you’re right, and time will heal his wounds.”

Frank Cohen and Michael Page invited all the people Nick himself would have if he had been up to the task. They waited at the old, tree-filled cemetery of the St. Ignatius monastery in Brooklyn. Francis Dulong and his wife, Trevor and Madeleine Downey, Michael Campione and his wife Sally, and Christopher Kostidis’s best friends were among the group of about eighty mourners. The grounds of the monastery were sealed off by over a hundred police officers. No one without a permit was allowed near the cemetery. Countless reporters, camera teams, and also citizens of the city, who wanted to support their mayor in this hardest hour of his life, crowded behind the police barriers.

Nick’s face looked as if it were set in stone as he walked along the cemetery’s winding paths between his in-laws. He stared straight ahead and seated himself in the first row of chairs at the open grave into which the urns had been placed. Piles of funeral wreaths and flower arrangements, which had been diligently checked by FBI and NYPD explosives experts, were piled around the open grave. The mourners took their seats. No one uttered a word. The tragic deaths of Mary, Christopher, and Britney Edwards had shocked them, but the sight of Nick Kostidis had them speechless in dismay. They’d come because they wanted to stand by him and express their compassion and deep sorrow, but he didn’t give them a chance to do so. He sat stiffly on his chair, as white as a sheet, without expressing the slightest emotion, without even once averting his gaze from the urns. When Father Kevin stepped over to the grave with a procession of four altar boys, everyone except Nick stood up. It was as if he hadn’t even noticed them.

“Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord,” the priest began in a low voice that still carried to the last row. “Hear my voice, O Lord! Let your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication. If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered. I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts his word. My soul waits for the Lord, more than sentinels wait for the dawn.”

The Jesuit priest sprinkled holy water over the urns. The words he spoke were simple but full of compassion, and few mourners were able to hold back their tears.

Mary’s mother sobbed and blew her nose loudly. Father Kevin said the first words of the Lord’s Prayer aloud, and then he continued to pray in silence, sprinkling the urns with holy water again and swinging small incense censers back and forth. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. O Lord, save their souls from the gates of hell! Let them rest in peace.”

The church bell of the abbey chimed. Mourners continued sobbing quietly, but Nick sat motionless with a frozen face.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Father Kevin said. “Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies; whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”

In conclusion, the Jesuit priest took some soil from the bowl standing next to the grave and threw in three handfuls.

“For you are dust and to dust you shall return. The Lord will raise you up on the last day.”

By request, the mourners refrained from giving their condolences to Nick after paying their last respects to the deceased. They exited in silence, until he was the last one left sitting in the first row of chairs. Despite the oppressive heat, he didn’t seem to sweat in his black suit and hadn’t moved once since he sat down an hour ago.

Frank watched his boss with an uncertain look. Did he even realize that the funeral was over? The gravediggers arrived and started to shovel dirt onto the grave and pile the flowers and wreaths on top of it. They were used to grieving relatives and performed their duty quickly and quietly. Frank and the bodyguards waited patiently a few yards away in the heat of the July afternoon.

Only now did Nick stand up and step toward the grave where his parents and brothers had been buried. He swayed slightly, but then he managed to straighten his shoulders and take a deep breath. He didn’t feel the heat that had built up between the old cemetery’s ivy-covered walls. He didn’t see the clear blue sky, which arched brightly over the city despite his sorrow. He couldn’t hear the birds singing in the crown of the dense old trees. The sun was setting in the west by the time Nick Kostidis finished his silent dialogue with all those whom he’d accompanied to this place. He left the cemetery with a lowered head, the epitome of grief and despair.