“And, two, because the woman who owns the plane, Ingrid Karlsson, is a friend of mine. She’s been an aide to me and this agency on numerous occasions. She’s asked me for a favor and I don’t want to disappoint her.”
Storm looked for telltale signs of artifice from Jones, even though the man was too cagey to give them with any frequency. Still, Storm knew Jones didn’t do favors without the promise of a significant return. Storm wondered what it was this time — or if he’d ever find out.
There was never just one layer with the Head of Internal Division Enforcement.
“Okay,” Storm said. “And I’m guessing you have a plan for me beyond waltzing into an NTSB-secured crash site and asking them to show me their underwear?”
“Of course,” Jones said. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER 4
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, South of France
he rug was from the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a perfect and near-priceless specimen restored to a glory not seen since Suleiman I himself last walked on it. Resting on top of it was a desk made from rare, Cuban mahogany, harvested from an old-growth rain forest and hand-carved by a master artisan who toiled for a year on its intricacies. Perched on that was a ringing phone, connected to a network of satellites that guaranteed users global coverage, from the peaks of Antarctica to the icy reaches of the North Pole.
The woman answering it was Ingrid Karlsson, who might have been fifty — only her birth certificate knew for sure — and who might have been the world’s richest woman. Much as with her age, she would neither confirm nor deny speculation.
“Yes?” she said, and then listened to several minutes of excited jabbering on the other end of the line.
When the voice stopped, Karlsson said, “She’s dead? Are…are you sure? There is no mistake?”
She waited for the reply, then said only “thank you” before ending the call.
She sat perfectly still for a moment. Her gray-blue eyes stared straight ahead. Her near-black hair, which was chopped in straight bangs across her forehead, fell in shimmering strands down to her shoulders. Swedish by birth, a resident of Monaco for tax reasons, she had written a book — half memoir, half polemic — entitled Citizen of the World. Nevertheless, she retained the trademark stoicism of her homeland in the face of tragic news.
She pressed a button on the desk. In Swedish, she said, “Tilda, come in here, please.”
A statuesque redhead, dressed in brief shorts and a form-fitting knit top, appeared in the door.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“One of our planes has crashed in the United States,” she said. “Brigitte is dead.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We must make a video. We will share it with the press and on the Internet.”
Tilda’s head tilted as she hesitated. While once a common request, this was now unusual. But she recovered with, “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”
Tilda disappeared. Karlsson bowed her head, thinking of Brigitte, thinking of all they had achieved together. Ingrid Karlsson was the only child of a man who bequeathed her a modestly successful Swedish shipping company when she was in her twenties. Over the ensuing three decades, Ingrid had taken it and — one ambitiously leveraged acquisition at a time — turned it into the world’s largest privately held logistics company, an empire that included a massive fleet of container ships, planes, trucks, and railroad cars. All told, Karlsson Logistics had a presence in sixty-two countries and on four continents.
The press had taken to calling her “Xena: Warrior Princess,” for her aggressive business style, Amazonian stature, and more-than-passing resemblance to the 1990s cult television icon. She detested the nickname at first, then warmed to it when she realized it was meant as a sign of respect, a symbol of her strength and success.
And the success had been considerable. Her estimated wealth, which started in the many millions, burgeoned into the billions. She freely shared her riches with her employees, both her personal staff, to whom her loyalty was fierce, and her corporate workforce, which enjoyed salaries and benefits beyond what any publicly traded company could offer.
Brigitte had been her most trusted executive during the last decade and a half. More than just a right hand, she was treated like a partner, even though Ingrid retained sole ownership of the business. There was even talk — since neither was married — that the two may have been more than just colleagues. But that was only speculation.
What was known was that Brigitte Bildt had increasingly become the public face of Karlsson Logistics, the one who held the press conferences and opined in the media on matters of importance to the company.
It was a role ceded to her willingly by her boss. During her younger years, Ingrid had enjoyed her prominence. She reveled in the nightlife of Monaco. She flew stunt planes at air shows. She played polo better than most of the men at charity benefit matches. It was all to the delight of the paparazzi, who could always sell another photo of a real-life warrior princess to the tabloids.
But she also used her celebrity as a kind of pulpit to preach a message of free trade, international cooperation, and global thinking. She spoke for groups of policy makers and for academics, saying that governments that meddled in the markets or tried to enforce national boundaries — whether through force or through oppressive tariffs — were merely standing in the way of history. She envisioned a world map without lines on it. She had once funded a conference of geographers who presented papers speculating on the death of the nation-state as an organizing construct. “One day,” she told them during her opening remarks, “we will all be citizens of the world.”
But through the years, she had grown weary of the spotlight, of journalists who would rather gossip about her sexuality than tackle important issues, of being a target for the kind of criticism that came with such high visibility. Her social life became more private, centering on smaller gatherings with thoughtful friends or valued associates. She had lost her appetite for fame.
Her final gesture of withdrawal from public life was to commission a yacht, pouring a reported $1 billion of her fortune into its construction. She named it Warrior Princess and signed the shipbuilders to aggressively worded nondisclosure agreements.
Rumors of its grandeur were legion. Even the Russian oligarchs were said to ooze jealousy over its alleged specifications: a mix of gas turbine and diesel engines said to deliver more than one hundred thousand in total horsepower; a triple-reinforced hull that was both bulletproof and bombproof; luxuries that included a full-size cinema, a library, private gardens, a swimming pool, a full discotheque, and a 5,200-square-foot master suite; and a superstructure built to withstand the pounding of a Category 5 hurricane. Aerial photographs of the 565-foot-long vessel tended to be from a distance. No one had ever photographed the inside.
Nevertheless, Ingrid Karlsson was going to give the world a small glimpse of it now. Tilda had returned with a high-definition video camera attached to a tripod, which she set in front of the desk.
“Are you ready, ma’am?” she asked.
Ingrid nodded. Tilda zoomed in on her boss, then pushed a button. The small red light on the front of the camera illuminated.
“I lost a loved one today,” she began. “And I am aware, on this most horrible of days in the world’s history, that I am not alone. My heart shatters at the loss of Brigitte Bildt, my valued colleague, my best friend, my North Star. But my heart shatters also for the many thousands who share in my suffering.”