Naked, Tom Nashatka scrambled out of the bed. He looked at the screen of the computer.
Kimberly said, “The last sets of numbers Byron sent don’t resemble any bank numbers or wire routing codes in the world.”
“Maybe Johnson just got it wrong.”
“I don’t think so. He’s always correctly written down what Ali’s given him in the past. Byron’s one of those careful bigtime lawyers. He doesn’t make little mistakes like that. He’s sent out the wrong passages for a reason.”
Tom struck several other computer keys, searching for something. “I told Hurd and Rana two days ago, after that last time with the judge, that they were misreading Johnson. They think he’ll get scared, fold, and work with them. That’s not my take on Johnson.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Our sweeps of his office and apartment. He reads Dickens and William Burroughs, he has subscriptions to the New York Review of Books and the National Review. He watches Casablanca and Legally Blonde. He writes letters to himself, some that he never sends.”
She gave him one of those dazzling blonde smiles. “That’s it. He’s a Renaissance man.”
Tom was serious. “I don’t think so. Byron is restless, irritable, discontented. He’s rebellious, even though he has that, like, you know, New England aristocrat in him.”
“Why not just walk up to Byron and say, ‘Hey, Byron, we’re with the good guys, we’d like you to help us. Can’t you get Hussein to tell you where all the money is and then let us know?’ And America’s been good to him. He’s a lawyer, he has a license to print money. Why not just ask him to help us all out?”
“Andy told me weeks ago that that was not the way to reach Byron. Remember, Byron wanted to represent one of these guys. He asked for this. Andy and his profilers say that Byron can only be made to cooperate the old-fashioned way-scare the hell out of him. It’s our job to scare the shit out of him. I’m not so sure.”
“Who ever knows what a person will do? Profilers? Relying on a profile? Relying on astrological signs works as well.”
“Hurd, loony as he is, has been in the business of nailing people for years and years. He’s a legend.”
“In his own mind.” She glanced at Tom, waiting for him to join her in mocking Hurd.
The faintest traces of dawn had just spread over Central Park. There were the open spaces where the trees parted for the Sheep Meadow, that undulating and well-tended field of green, and, further north, the Great Lawn. In the far distance, even higher in the park, the dawn light glowed on the acres of water in the reservoir.
“What about Christina?” Tom asked.
“What about her?”
“What does she think? She’s spent lots of time with him.”
Kimberly Smith paused. “What do you want me to say to her?”
“What time are you meeting her?”
“Ten.”
“Where?”
“There’s a French restaurant on Madison Avenue and 83rd Street with long tables and benches where all the East Side ladies gather for breakfast, French-style, after dropping their kids at their forty-thousand-dollar-a-year private schools. Byron, she told me, hates Madison Avenue and would never walk into a French-style place.”
“Just have the usual conversation, Kim. Let her tell you what Byron is saying and doing. But if you have a chance, ask her where Byron is keeping his notes of his meetings with Ali.”
“Why?”
“We’ve done three sweeps of his office in the last week. He isn’t keeping any of his notes there anymore. He must be carrying them with him and bringing them home.”
Kimberly smiled. “The cagey little bastard. Under that Gary Cooper exterior beats the heart of Abbe Hoffman. He wants to throw us off. Something has gotten his attention. It’s clear he’s now sending out random passages from the Koran, not the passages Ali’s giving him.”
“Well, if anyone can find out where his real notes are, it’s the foxy Christina Rosario.”
Kimberly, naked, stood up. She was blonde, slim, shapely and, as she embraced athletic Tom Nashatka, deeply alluring and completely tantalizing. “Hey, Navy Seal, boy agents aren’t supposed to say sexy things about girl agents. It’s taboo.”
Kimberly Smith loved every facet of Tom’s size. He was a massive man, and at first he overpowered her, picking her up from the chair and carrying her around the room as she wrapped her legs around him. But gradually the tide of their love-making turned, and she finally overpowered him.
19
BYRON WAS NEVER COMFORTABLE when he had lunch at the Regency Hotel at 61st and Park Avenue, although he had spent many hours in the noisy and elegant room over the years. It was a favorite lunch spot for Sandy Spencer and other leading partners at SpencerBlake. Every day of the week for years, the restaurant attracted at breakfast and lunch not only the partners at SpencerBlake but a perennial cast of celebrities. Smiling, radiantly bald Ron Perelman was in the room almost every time Byron was there. Before they went to jail, Bernie Madoff and Conrad Black were constant guests. Byron had often seen Wilbur Ross and Warren Buffett, Boone Pickens and George Soros there. And there were always people in the room whom his partners called the “entertainers”-Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, Larry King, and, at almost every breakfast for years, wide-eyed, droll Al Sharpton, that man of the people who loved expensive restaurants and the parties of celebrities.
SpencerBlake had its own table-a curved, plush bench in the far corner of the room with a view toward the Park Avenue windows. Byron had only heard rumors of the monthly tab for the use of the table: there were jokes about the $30,000 table, “$35,000 when you throw in the chairs.” Byron, who as a partner could have easily gotten the real information about the cost, never asked. He simply wasn’t interested. For years, his wife and his law partners were baffled by Byron’s almost casual attitude toward his share of the firm’s profits and his disinterest in the firm’s finances. Some of the younger partners speculated that Byron must have been the scion of one of those old money families and that he had been born into great wealth completely independent of his earnings as a lawyer. To the manor born.
Byron had paid little attention to money over the years simply because he had always earned enough to meet his needs, not because he had inherited any real wealth. His father had started his working life in the 1930s with more inherited wealth than he left to Byron when he died in 1980. The Ambassador had devoted his life to working for the State Department and never earned as much as he and his wife and son needed; for decades he had steadily drawn down on his inheritance to meet the expenses of his imperial lifestyle. When he died, he left Byron the trim, well-built, sturdy house on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine, but little else. Byron had held onto the Maine house, although he used it only two or three weeks each year. It was the only property he now owned. The two-million-dollar Fifth Avenue apartment in which he and Joan had raised their children had been turned over to Joan as part of the divorce. Byron sometimes acknowledged to himself that, as his years of high earnings as a lawyer were coming to an end, he hadn’t accumulated enough or held onto enough to retire, to buy another apartment, and to enjoy the sense of financial security that most lawyers of his age and experience appeared to have.