“A hundred percent,” said London, eyes locked on her boss. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck.” Mandy exhaled angrily. In that instant, she abandoned her married name and everything that went with being Mrs. Michael Blume, and returned to being simply Mandy Rosen, the girl they’d called “Rupert’s meanest dog.” “I’m ready,” she said. “Spill.”
London leaned closer and gave Mandy a detailed summary of everything she had to date: the email from R that had put her on PetroSaud’s trail, Benson Chow’s corroboration that the Asian fund mentioned had to be Indonesia’s, followed by her own suspicion that if there was one, there had to be others—and there were. In fact, seven sovereign wealth funds had worked with PetroSaud, though their complicity in any illegal act remained to be seen. And finally, Benson’s bombshell that every one of the funds involved with PetroSaud had been brought to market by Harrington-Weiss, and Harrington-Weiss alone. Somewhere in there she tossed in her encounter with Nadya Sukarno and her belief that the Indonesian minister of finance was as guilty as sin.
“You think Michael knows who ran those deals?” asked London.
“Of course he does,” said Mandy. “I’m always amazed a sixty-story office building is big enough to hold all those egos. No one does a billion-dollar deal without making sure everyone in the firm knows about it. Probably hires a brass band to march up and down the hallways trumpeting the news. You’d think people that smart and successful would have a little self-confidence. Hardly. They are the most insecure, hypercompetitive assembly of geniuses you’ve ever seen.” Mandy laughed thinly. “Of course, I can’t ask Michael. I mean, I won’t.”
London hadn’t expected any different. “I was thinking of dredging up the prospectuses from all the offerings. Research has to have copies. I’ll bet we’ll come across a common name, someone at HW who worked all the deals.”
Mandy wagged a finger at London. “Wrong side of the animal. You’re looking at the ass, not the snout.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You never worked at a bank, did you?”
“No.”
“When a client closes a deal, an IPO, a secondary offering, if they acquire a company or sell off a division…or”—and here, she looked directly at London—“if they complete a successful investment fund,a billion-dollar one,they throw a party.”
“A party?”
“Champagne, caviar, beef Wellington, white truffles…tous les accompagnements.”
London smiled. “I see now.”
“Ten years ago I would have added coke and hookers. Alas, times have changed.” Mandy sighed. “Anyhow, my love, no self-respecting investment authority would throw a party without inviting the press.”
“If your picture doesn’t land in the paper, did the party even take place?”
“Not the papers. The glossies. The gossip bibles.”
“TheTatler,” said London.
“Bingo.”
London crowded in beside Mandy Blume, both seated at the managing editor’s battleship-sized desk, eyes glued to the twenty-seven-inch screen of her iMac Pro. The door was closed, the blinds drawn. For the past hour they had scoured back issues of theSingapore Tatler,Asia’s preeminent chronicler of high society, searching for photographs taken at parties celebrating the closings of investment funds for (in order) Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, and India. London, for one, was growing tired of looking at so many magnificently bejeweled, begowned, and be-dinner-jacketed men and women, all of whom appeared to be having the times of their lives. They were a cosmopolitan, multinational, multiethnic lot. They had one thing in common. They were rich. Filthy rich.
She and Mandy found their man early on.It had to be a man. Tall, raven-haired, severe, never a smile, not handsome, but a commanding presence, whose laser-like black eyes bored holes in the camera. Whenever there was royalty—a king, queen, prince, or maharajah—he was present, hobnobbing with the select few, nearly always the only “commoner” in the photograph. Whenever there was a head of state—president, prime minister, chairman—he was there, embraced as an equal. The pictures had been taken over the course of four years, but to their eyes he was everywhere at once. The thread that bound them all together.
Or, as London put it, the common denominator. And, yes, he was an alpha.
Hadrian Lester, vice chairman of Harrington-Weiss.
“It’s ‘Lecter,’” said Mandy. “That’s what they call him at the firm. He’s a serial killer. He eats the competition alive.”
“I hope not with fava beans,” said London.
“Oh yes,” said Mandy. “And Chianti, though I’ve heard he prefers Château Pétrus at ten thousand euros a bottle.”
“I know who he is,” said London. “He’s married to that Europop singer. Beatrice something.”
“He must be doing it for love, then,” said Mandy, rolling her eyes. “Son of a bitch.”
“He’s in on it, all right. Maybe the instigator. He has to be.”
“You don’t think it’s the other one, the Saudi? The smiling Arab?”
