Geneva Connection, The (19 page)

“Please contact me should you require any further information. Yours faithfully, John Kent. Chief Executive Officer.”

Kent held up his palms when Tara came back into the office. “I know. It’s a bloody nightmare,” he said before she could say anything.

“What does this mean for the firm?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.” He lied because it wasn’t right for him to discuss with Tara what it meant for CBC before he’d sat down with his partners first.

“When do you want the letter to be dated?”

“Put tomorrow’s date on it. I want to mull over the wording once more before it goes out. I’d like you to set up a partners’ meeting for tomorrow afternoon, so I can brief everyone on this too.”

“I’ll set it up.”

“Don’t mention the letter. Just tell them an important matter has come up, but don’t tell them what it is.”

I need to work out how I’m going to break this to them,
he thought.

That night, Kent again struggled to sleep. He kept searching for possible explanations for the suspect passport. The best theory he could come up with was that Andreas Kvarnback had supplied Tritona with a false passport to hide some form of personal embarrassment. The worst was that Tritona had knowingly supplied CBC with the forgery in order to mask the real identity of their investors. He suspected the worst.

What if none of the named investors behind Tritona is real? The money’s real enough; it’s coming from somewhere.

By the time he fell asleep it was four a.m. He slept through his alarm and only woke at seven thirty when Sarah’s alarm went off. He had breakfast with her, but didn’t mention anything about the previous day’s events.

She’ll be horrified
, he thought.
I’ll tell her when I get to the bottom of it all
.

Kent arrived at CBC midmorning. “You look tired. Can I bring you a coffee?” asked Tara as he walked by her, heading straight for his office.

“Make it a strong one. Did you arrange the meeting with the partners for me?” he asked, trying to force a smile.

“I did. I’ve set it up for four p.m. It’s in your diary.”

“Thanks. Can you print off copies of my draft letter ready for me to hand out at the meeting?”

“Sure. Did you have any further changes to make to it first?”

“No. I think it’s pretty much there, subject to any comments from the other partners.”

He sat staring at the screensaver on his PC.
What’s the point of doing any work if the business is about to go off a cliff?

Tara brought in his coffee. “By the way, this came for you by courier first thing this morning,” she said, handing him a large brown envelope marked Private and Confidential.

Kent sipped the coffee. “Thanks.” Tara walked back to her desk while he ripped open the envelope. Inside he found a DVD case and a typed note. It read:

“You may wish to reconsider sending your letter after watching this.”

What the hell’s this?
He stared at the DVD on his desk and then reread the note. There was no signature, and the envelope gave no clues as to the identity of the sender. It took a few moments before his brain engaged. He stood up, shut his office door, and then inserted the DVD into the drive of his PC. His hands were shaking.

The machine whirred as it launched the disc. The PC screen turned black, and Kent could see the reflection of his face, wide-eyed and frightened. A moment later, the display lit up.

“Oh my God!” he said out loud. “How the…”

Chapter 27

O
N
K
ENT’S
PC S
CREEN
was a large room with a double bed in the middle of the shot. He recognized it immediately as Hotel Morgana. Then there were muffled voices of a man and a woman out of view. When they appeared, they were kissing each other. The DVD caught every last detail of Kent and Tara on the night that “never happened.”

“Jesus Christ!” he said, covering his mouth with his hand.

Kent fumbled for the button then ejected the disc and threw it into his briefcase with trembling hands. His heart pounded the inside of his chest, and he shivered, the revelation hitting him like a brick wall. In that awful moment, he realized they were dealing with serious criminals; people who had the resources to set up cameras in the hotel.

They must have my office bugged, too. Other than Tara, no one knows about the draft letter to the NCA.

He sat motionless, staring at his PC. What the hell was he going to do? He held his face in his hands, elbows leaning on the desk. His shallow breath caught in his chest as a chilling thought jumped into his head. Could these people have been behind Anton’s death? It was a hit and run, after all. Henning had been in Kent’s office when they were discussing Andreas Kvarnback. The next day, he was dead.

This office has to be bugged
, he thought.
Is Sarah at risk? This is a fucking nightmare.

He stood, picked up his briefcase and rushed out of his office. “I’m going out for an hour,” he said to Tara, without stopping.

Kent drove away from Cambridge as fast as he could. He needed to place some distance between him and the office and whoever was watching him. He drove onto the M11 motorway and put his foot down. Could they be following him now? He kept looking in his rearview mirror. When he caught sight of his reflection, his face was white and his eyes were glazed. He took the car up to ninety before he realized he was going too fast and slowed down. Twenty miles south of Cambridge, he stopped at a motorway service station. He got out of the car and walked into the coffee shop, bought a strong coffee and sat in a quiet corner looking out of the window. He was in a public space.
Surely, it’s safe here?

When he rang Sarah’s mobile, it went to voice mail. He left a message asking her to call him.
I need to know she’s safe
, he thought, though he knew she was probably with a patient.

He nursed his cold coffee for two hours, ignoring the cell phone calls from the office. For the first hour Kent sat, numb, staring out of the window at the traffic rushing by on the motorway. With his mind blank, the people coming and going in the coffee shop seemed to be in another world, as though none of this was really happening.

As the shock began to fade, he took out a sheet of paper from his briefcase and began capturing his random thoughts on this nightmare: Who was he dealing with? What do they want now they’ve declared their hand? CBC must be of some ongoing value to them. After all, it would be just as easy to kill Kent as they did Henning. Somehow, his death had to have been a warning.

Seeing the whole thing on a sheet of paper helped him collect his thoughts. One thing was certain: he could no longer file his suspicious activity report with the NCA. He had to bury the letter. Going to the authorities now was out of the question. These people wouldn’t hesitate to ruin his marriage or harm him or Sarah.

Kent rubbed his chin then closed his eyes for a moment. He couldn’t mention this to Tara. They were bound to hear any conversation in the office. Besides, he couldn’t burden her with this on top of the problems with her mother. What good would it do, anyway? There was nothing she could do about it.

He picked up his voice mails. Still nothing from Sarah. He rang her office and was told she was still in with patients.
Thank God.

Tara had rung several times, so he called her back and said something had come up on the personal front. He asked her to leave the NCA letter facedown on his desk and to cancel the partners’ meeting arranged for this afternoon. “Just tell the partners something’s come up and apologize on my behalf,” he said.

Kent had to make sure the letter never saw the light of day.

Chapter 28

D
OUG
W
RIGHT
H
AD
D
EVELOPED
a leathery tan; the kind you get from spending too much time on the golf course. He was a good ten pounds heavier, too. Since leaving Henderson Wright as senior partner, he’d taken on a couple of non-executive director positions: one with a major oil company and the other with a firm of management consultants, where he was now chairman. Both roles combined took up only one day a week, so he’d spent the last few months improving his golf swing and taking long vacations in the Mediterranean. The boredom was killing him. Apart from golf, he had no real interests or friends with whom he could spend time. Even other retired partners from the old firm found excuses to avoid him when he called them suggesting they meet up for lunch or dinner. His wife was anxious for him to find another challenging role so he’d be out of her hair. It was never part of the deal that she would have to spend sixteen hours a day listening to him rant on about this and that. He was becoming a pain, and he knew it.

When he received a call from a well-known headhunter asking if he’d consider taking on a part-time role as head of a new, high-profile division at the FCA, Wright took all of a nanosecond to decide he wanted it. He’d heard the FCA was beefing up its activities following the financial crisis and that part of this involved taking on senior figures from commerce and industry to head up some of its new units. It was the mention of “high profile” that turned his head. Wright didn’t need the money, but he still missed the kudos that went with being the head of a Big Four global accounting firm. He missed his stage.

The headhunter laid it on thick. He’d already tried several other senior business people before calling Wright, but none of them would remotely consider taking on a quasi-government role; they had no desire to become a regulator and they saw the pay as pitifully low. By now, the headhunter was halfway down his B-list.

“My client is adamant that you’re the perfect fit for this position, Mr. Wright. They’re impressed with your track record at Henderson Wright and have asked me to do everything in my power to persuade you to consider taking on this pivotal role,” he said. “They know you’ll do a great job for them. In many ways, the role was designed for you.”

Wright did not need persuading but tried to appear nonchalant. “I may have time to fit it in. It just depends on the position itself. Tell me more about the new division.”

“The new team will take a proactive approach to investigating regulated financial services firms rather than simply waiting for regular reports to come in from those firms and reacting to problems. Since the demise of Lehman Brothers, the regulator has wanted to investigate actively those firms that don’t appear to be in any trouble. They call it ‘pro-active regulation,’ and they recognize that they need a City heavy hitter to set out this new strategy, build an appropriate team, and then head up these new investigations.”

Wright couldn’t contain the smug grin on his face. “Yes, I can certainly see how my background and experience would fit.”

“They’d really like to meet up with you to explore this further, if you are interested, of course.”

Wright was salivating over the role. “I see no harm meeting the people,” he said, coolly. In his mind, the job was already his. He didn’t care what they’d have to say about the money or any of the other details; the status was everything. Each time he found a firm up to no good it would be all over the newspapers, and Wright would have his name right there in the middle of the story. He couldn’t wait to start.

Immediately after the call, Wright rushed to tell his wife. “Do you really have to take it, Doug? I’ll miss spending the time with you,” she said, with as much conviction as she could muster.

A week later, Wright found himself back at Canary Wharf for the meeting at the FCA. He’d researched the background to the regulator and the history of regulation of financial services firms in the UK. He’d read all the articles he could find online relating to the challenges of financial services regulation. He’d even asked his wife to play the role of the interviewer most evenings so he could anticipate the questions and rehearse his answers. He was well prepared. Although he craved the position, his challenge was not to let it show.