Shadowed Paradise (14 page)

She twisted the mug in her hands and
found herself staring at a colorful image of Handsome Dan, the Yale
bulldog grinning from the side of the beer stein. Beneath him, the
Yale motto,
Lux et Veritas
.
Light and truth.
Oh, God!
Hastily, she put the mug away from her.

“
Where was I?” she murmured. “Oh, yes,
reunions. I could always tell the old Blues who worked for the
government alphabet soups. Particularly the CIA types, who claimed
they worked in some embassy or information agency. Later . . .
later I developed a positive instinct for feds of every
hue.”

“
I take it the experience wasn’t
exactly pleasant.”

“
You could say that.” Brad’s silence,
his willingness to listen, helped. Maybe, at last, she could get it
all out.

“
After I graduated,” Claire said, “I
got a job in New York. Marketing assistant in an ad agency. A
dogsbody job, but it paid enough to move to the city and become
part of the world that always lurked on the Connecticut horizon.
The Big Apple. I couldn’t wait to get there.

“
And, no, I wasn’t disillusioned. Not
at first. I was promoted twice in a year, and then I met Jim, your
classic Prince Charming—bright, handsome, outgoing. He had a great
job not far from my office in Manhattan.” Claire paused. “At
InterBank.”

Brad swore softly. There wasn’t a federal
agent in the country who didn’t recognize the significance of the
name InterBank. “God, Claire, I’m sorry,” he murmured. He wanted to
take her in his arms, offer comfort, but he was afraid she might
shatter, and this was a story he had to hear. No way could he
imagine Claire Langdon as part of the crime and sleaze of
InterBank.

“
Jim was just the type of person they
were looking for,” Claire said in a voice only faintly tinged with
bitterness. “Ivy League, charismatic, ambitious, impeccable family
background, lots of equally impeccable friends. The perfect
American front for a foreign bank.

“
When we were married, we moved
straight into a townhouse on the Upper East Side, complete with a
view of the park and eventually a nanny to take Jamie to play in
the park with all the other suitably nannied children. By the time
Jamie was three we’d added an estate in Bedford. It even had a
ballroom . . .

“
That’s it, really.” Claire brought her
tale to an abrupt halt. She couldn’t go on. She thought she could
get through it, but she couldn’t. “You can guess the rest. Two
years ago when InterBank went down, Jim went with it.”

To most Americans the crash of the
world’s largest international bank was only a dull thud compared to
war, terrorism, and corporate misdeeds that robbed people of their
lifetime savings.
Bunch of foreigners . . .
what could you expect?
InterBank was forgotten as soon
as the newspaper was put aside, the television news switched to the
latest sitcom.

It might have been more of a sensation if the
average citizen was aware of the truth.

InterBank was a financial institution eager
to provide any service. Want to finance a revolution? Launder your
drug money? Avoid the tax collector? Rob your country’s treasury?
Finance a terrorist attack? See your friendly neighborhood
InterBank. Two hundred branches in sixty countries and a thousand
ways to hide your assets . . .

“
In New York,” Claire added, offering a
tidbit in the hope Brad would ignore the yawning gap in her story,
“Jim was right up near the top. And I was somewhere out in left
field.”

She had been a naive idiot with her head in
the clouds. She had had Jamie . . . and a miscarriage. She had had
opera, theatre, ballet, charity events, elaborate weekend parties.
She had a husband who gradually became less ebullient, thinner . .
. withdrawn. Impotent. A husband who later admitted that part of
his job had been to make sure his clients were provided with the
finest call girls or whatever else their exotic tastes demanded.
Once, he had even gone out in middle of the night to pay the
gambling debts of an Arab sheik. Claire recalled, with
self-loathing, that at the time she had found Jim’s outrage
funny.

James Langdon. Prominent executive at the
bank that provided the ultimate in international banking service.
Money available anywhere, any time. For anything.

And she never guessed. Never realized.
It was a
bank
, for Heaven’s
sake. A pillar of the international community. A multi-billion
dollar corporation whose executives lived better than many heads of
state, hobnobbed with high-ranking government officials, the movers
and shakers of free enterprise and private—very private—banking.
They were flying high. Golden. Untouchable. Until their world
crashed and burned.

Brad’s voice cut through the flames of
memory. Gentle but firm. Insistent. “Tell me the parts you’ve left
out.”

The house in Bedford had been built in the
halcyon days before the first Great War. A New York stockbroker,
grown rich on the boom times of railroads and oil, wanted a proper
setting for the dynasty he envisioned as he became the proud father
of his eighth child. Nothing less than the creation of his own
English country house would do. Built of rough-hewn quarry stone in
varying shades of gray, the house stretched along the top of one of
Bedford’s rolling hills, gazing out over vast amounts of closely
shaven green lawn and meticulously tended gardens. Just prior to
1929's Black Friday, an Olympic-size pool was added. It nestled at
the foot of a hillside rock garden, a fall of water sliding down
carefully constructed shallow runways to tumble with picturesque
elegance and tinkling music into a lily pond above the shallow end
of the pool.

Inside the vast mansion the floors and
fireplaces were imported marble, a different shade in each of the
first-floor rooms. The focal points of the main salon, larger than
most people’s homes, was a priceless Savonnerie carpet. The
perfection of the room’s designer furnishings was never sullied by
day-to-day living. A formal dining room, library, breakfast room,
game room, screening room and exercise room also graced the first
floor. The kitchen, which might have qualified for a world-class
hotel, shone with a blinding array of copper and stainless steel,
gleaming white cabinets, granite counters and white ceramic tile
floor. A ballroom with Grecian columns, a wall of French doors and
a mirror-polished floor of white ash occupied the entire west side
of the imposing edifice. All in all, the stockbroker’s 1904
dreamhouse was deemed a suitable setting for an up-and-coming young
vice president of InterBank. Jim Langdon had written an initial
deposit to the real estate broker at the first showing.

Claire, who found the gleaming gourmet
kitchen and resident cook intimidating, immediately had a second
kitchen installed on the second floor. Which still left eight
bedroom suites, a playroom for Jamie and space for Jim Langdon’s
elaborate office, which contained every state-of-the-art bell and
whistle a wealthy executive could desire.

The dormered third floor had servants’
bedrooms, mostly empty, and two separate attics. There was also, in
classic tradition, an apartment over the garage for the
cook/housekeeper, Emily Jeffers and her husband Bob, who had the
responsibility of overseeing the smooth running of the household.
The rest of the staff consisted of a nanny and a live-in maid. The
gardener came five days a week, a three-man cleaning crew twice a
week.

The management and clientele of InterBank
liked to party, and Bedford was just far enough out of Manhattan to
inspire a sense of freedom. Mrs. James Langdon found herself
hosting weekend houseparties on a regular basis. The guest list
ranged from Manhattan money to government movers and shakers to an
international array of InterBank’s wealthy and secretive
depositors. The Langdons were off and running near the head of the
pack of New York’s brightest and most successful young
professionals.

On the day Claire Langdon’s world of luxury
began to unravel, she and Jamie were in the upstairs kitchen
happily absorbed in decorating Christmas cookies. She had flour on
her nose and in her hair, the telltale kiss of cinnamon candy on
her lips. The apron she was wearing over a pair of old jeans was a
disaster of dough and colored frosting. Jamie was carefully adding
raisin eyes to give his gingerbread man sight when they were
interrupted by an almost breathless maid who had,
uncharacteristically, run up the stairs.

“
Two men downstairs,” she panted. “They
wish to see you.”

The house in Bedford had many visitors, none
of them uninvited.

“
I can’t see anyone now, Consuela,”
Claire protested. “I’m a mess.”

“
Must,” the maid said firmly. “Big
suits, these men. They give card.” Belatedly, the maid held out a
business card.

Dear God. Claire’s breath whooshed out as if
she’d taken a blow to the stomach. Jamie, though only five, looked
up, eyes wide as he sensed his mother’s disquiet.

“
It’s nothing,” Claire lied to her son.
“I’m just such a mess to see visitors. Your gingerbread man looks
great. Be my big helper, please, and see how many you can finish up
while I’m downstairs. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Claire took a
deep breath, willing herself to be calm. “Consuela, tell the
gentlemen I’ll be down in a minute.”

She was half way down the hall to her
room when she stopped. Jim would be shocked if she appeared before
visitors in any condition but perfection, but there was something
ominous about these visitors that screamed at her from the simple
black lettering on a white card that read
Douglas A. Chalmers, Federal Bureau of
Investigation
. It was perhaps better to appear
promptly, flour smudges and all. Surely baking Christmas cookies
made her one of the good guys. Didn’t it?

Why on earth was she panicking? The FBI had
come to the door in Connecticut in the days when she was still
living at home. All they had wanted was information about the son
of a neighbor who had applied for the Peace Corps. As Claire
descended the long curved staircase, forcing her feet to a
dignified rhythm, she mentally cataloged her Bedford neighbors for
those with children of college age. That was it, of course. Or
something equally innocuous. Had to be. There couldn’t be any other
reason for the FBI to pay her a visit.

By the time Claire reached the relative
intimacy of one of the smaller parlors she had rationalized herself
into a semblance of normalcy. Head high, every bit the gracious
lady of the manor, she walked into the room, only realizing what
she must look like when she saw the startled looks, hastily
suppressed, on the faces of the two dark-suited men as they rose to
their feet.

“
Oh, sorry,” Claire burst out,
stripping off her apron and tossing it carelessly on a Directory
chair reputed to having once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Christmas cookies.” She seated herself and motioned the men back
into their chairs. “What can I do for you?” she inquired
politely.

Special Agent Douglas Chalmers would have
blended into almost any surroundings. He had a calm everyman face,
straight brown hair, medium blue eyes, whose sharpness was well
hidden behind quiet professionalism. He was your friendly
neighborhood Boy Scout grown up to college professor. His
companion, Special Agent Sestak, was young, not long out of the
academy, Claire guessed. His dark eyes were alight with interest in
his surroundings and, very possibly, with interest in whatever had
brought them here.

It wasn’t going to be the Peace Corps. Claire
knew it.

When introductions had been made, Chalmers,
without elaboration, politely requested Claire’s assistance. As he
reached into his inner jacket and took out a folded piece of paper,
Claire wondered if that was also where he kept his gun. The whole
scene was surreal. Sitting in this early twentieth century parlor
full of European antiques, talking to two men with guns. “Mrs.
Langdon,” Chalmers said, unfolding the letter-size piece of paper,
“would you please look at this list and tell me if you recognize
any of the names on it?”

Wordlessly, Claire read the list of more than
thirty names. “Not all of them,” she said when she finished, “but
the ones I recognize are all clients of InterBank. I know little
about them beyond their names, but we frequently use this house for
entertaining the bank’s many international customers. The names I
recognize are people who have been guests here over the past year
or so.”

When Claire had marked each name she
recognized, Chalmers took the list back and handed her a photo.
“Can you identify any of these men?” he asked.

Claire frowned at the group photo of eight
men, all in Arab dress. With hair covered by head scarves and faces
covered by beards, identification was difficult. But a certain few,
she discovered, were familiar. Dutifully, Claire attempted to put
names each face. If she concentrated on doing what was asked of
her, maybe she could repress the questions that were threatening to
turn her mind to jelly.

“
Thank you, Mrs. Langdon, we appreciate
your cooperation,” Chalmers said after Claire managed to identify
five of the men.

Claire got the distinct impression she had
just passed a test. They were feeling her out. For what?

“
Mrs. Langdon,” Douglas Chalmers said,
obviously choosing his words with care, “we’d very much like to
talk to your husband about these people. We are investigating the
American side of possible irregularities in InterBank’s methods of
operation. We believe your husband could be helpful to our
investigation. Do you think you could persuade him to talk to
us?”