There was another face that had been present at all the parties, though not a banker. Tarek Al-Obeidi, the managing partner of PetroSaud, slim, silver haired, dignified, with a smile that could melt an iceberg.
“No,” said London. “He couldn’t get in the room where it started. It had to be Hadrian Lester giving the pitch. PetroSaud came afterward, once they agreed to use HW. ‘And by the way, you might want to consider using my friends in Saudi Arabia if you’d care to line your own pockets.’”
“He has balls, I’ll give him that.”
“Big brass ones,” said London. “By the time Lester brings up PetroSaud, he’s already felt them out. He knows who’s clean and who isn’t. The one thing HW stresses is discretion. I’m sure he tiptoes right up to the line before crossing it.”
“He really is a devil.”
London stepped away from the desk, stretching her arms. A hunch came to her. Really just an inkling. Something she’d seen in the pictures that caused the rest of it to make a little more sense.
“Do me a favor, boss. Type three words into the search bar. Humor me.”
“Shoot.”
Mandy Blume typed as London said the words. The results appeared. Mandy’s face dropped. “I have to tell Michael.”
“You can’t.”
“We’re ruined.”
“Not yet.”
Mandy sobbed. Tears began to flow. London put her arm around her managing editor. The words she’d asked her to type were “PetroSaud Hadrian Lester.”
The first result read:HARRINGTON-WEISS VICE CHAIRMAN JOINS BOARD OF SAUDI ARABIAN INVESTMENT FIRM PETROSAUD.Dated one month before the Indonesian deal.
The smoking gun.
“Nail ’em,” said Mandy, gathering herself. “Crucify the bastards.”
London said she would do her best. One question continued to nag at her, as it had for the past week.
Who was R?
Chapter 38
Singapore
As Hadrian Lester gazed from the window of his office on the fortieth floor of the Harrington-Weiss tower looking out over the city of Singapore, past the downtown core and the cricket fields, over Sheares Bridge, and east to the airport, he was thinking about prison.
In February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army, under the command of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, swept down the Malay Peninsula and crossed the Johor Straits to lay siege to the British colony of Singapore, known as the “Gibraltar of the East.” Eight days later, the British surrendered. Fifty thousand troops were taken prisoner. Winston Churchill called it the “worst disaster” in British military history. Some of the prisoners were shipped to camps in China, Burma, or Japan. Most, however, were incarcerated nearby at the prison complex at Changi, where the current airport had since been built.
Lester’s grandfather, Flight Lieutenant Robin Lester, had been one of those imprisoned there. As a child, Hadrian had listened to his grandfather’s stories describing the deplorable conditions. Little food, severe overcrowding, rampant disease—malaria, beriberi, dysentery—and, of course, the rats. Rats that grew as big as cats and as mean as tigers with teeth every bit as sharp. The stories had given the boy nightmares for years. Changi was hell on earth.
And so, today, when Hadrian Lester thought of prison, he imagined the horrors of Changi.
Never,he swore to himself.
“Mr. Lester, I have Minister of Finance Sukarno for you.”
Lester walked to his desk, placing a hand above the receiver as he composed his thoughts. His father had been a military man, too, and before joining the bank, so was he, also a pilot, flying Harrier Jump Jets out of RAF Lossiemouth and, later, off the carrier HMSIllustrious. He operated under one principle:“L’audace. Toujours de l’audace.”
He snatched the receiver and put it to his ear. “Calm the fuck down, Nadya,” he stated slowly in his warm, princely tone. “I have everything under control.”
“The man killed in Bangkok worked for PetroSaud, and now I’ve learned another of their employees died in Switzerland just last week. Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“Rafael de Bourbon was a blackmailer and a lousy one at that.”
