The Blood Lance (17 page)
'And if we can get Chernoff's cell phone. . .'
'We've got Chernoff's present location.'
Dale smiled, 'Assuming she hasn't ditched the phone since the raid.'
'Even if the phone is gone, as long as we know Chernoff owned it, we can find out where she went and who she called. Worst case scenario, we blow another alias and maybe find some people willing to tell us what they know.' Malloy turned his hands up and lifted both shoulders. 'I mean it's a long shot, but if it works maybe I won't have to interview
Herr
Ohlendorf.'
'You're really going to kidnap this guy, T. K.?'
'My doctor tells me I should be getting more exercise.'
Dale laughed. 'Say you don't get killed or arrested snatching this guy. How are you going to get him to talk? If he can tell you anything about Farrell or Chernoff he's not going to spill his guts just because you ask him!'
It was Malloy's turn to laugh. 'He will, if I ask him nicely.'
Saturday March 8, 2008.
Malloy caught a tram at the Reeperbahn station and rode back to the Bahnhof. It was past midnight, but there was still a crowd. A lot were young people there to have a good time, but there was a hardcore group off in the shadows drinking, smoking dope, shooting up, soliciting, and looking for easy marks. Malloy got some interest on this last count when he used one of the pay phones close to the shadows, but their instincts apparently warned them off. A man dressed as he was could be packing a weapon and you'd never know it until you were on the pavement bleeding out.
He dropped several coins in the telephone and then dialled a cell number. When Kate Brand answered he said, 'I thought we might take a look at how the other half lives tomorrow. Are you up for it?'
At his hotel Malloy brewed some tea and started through the DVD files Dale Perry had given him. He spent the first two hours looking at Helena Chernoff's known associates and affiliations. When he came to Dale Perry's summaries on Xeno, Chernoff was mentioned in passing, but there was no direct link to either Jack Farrell or Hugo Ohlendorf. He moved on to the deep background on Chernoff, just to get an idea of what he was dealing with. Chernoff's early work displayed audacity and ingenuity. She got to men who surrounded themselves with bodyguards. Her first three victims she took in their beds using a razor. The next two were long shots with a scope and rifle. Then there was another close encounter, this one a pickup at a sex club in Amsterdam, the kill taking place in an alley behind the club.
A year or so later a hit in St. Petersburg was caught on a security camera in an underground parking garage. Malloy watched the video after reading the narrative. Chernoff's target was an American businessman who was trying to build a hotel in the city. He had paid one of the Russian mobs for protection and was apparently only supposed to be with a driver. As Chernoff approached her target a team of bodyguards drove in. Some of the fire fight which followed was caught on camera. Most was off screen. The thing lasted about ninety seconds - an incredibly long time for an urban gunfight. The
quality of the security film made it difficult to tell what was happening, but one thing was clear: at the end Helena Chernoff was the only one still standing. It was from that incident that law enforcement had finally got reliable blood and DNA samples on the woman.
From surveillance cameras at Julian Corbeau's estate Interpol had pieced together a composite of clips that featured Chernoff - some with excellent voice samples and the best photographs of the woman in years. Whilst it was haunting for Malloy to see a gun battle in which he had been involved, the most disturbing clip showed Chernoff talking about him with Corbeau in three separate encounters. What she said was not especially informed, but the context of the exchanges suggested familiarity with him that he had not realised existed. Given Corbeau's resources and the way he had arranged to eliminate Malloy, it seemed to him Chernoff must have seen surveillance photos of him and could therefore recognise him.
Until Gil Fine had mentioned the video recordings of Chernoff at Julian Corbeau's estate, Malloy had not realised she had been involved. He could not accept the idea that her showing up with Jack Farrell was some kind of improbable coincidence, but he was not sure what he should make of it. It was tempting to imagine that Farrell had sought Chernoff's assistance precisely because she knew Malloy on sight and had gone up against him, but he was relatively sure Jack Farrell had no idea Malloy had instigated the SEC investigation. That meant a third party must have informed him of Malloy's involvement and even arranged for Chernoff to help. But help how? Chernoff was an assassin, not a bodyguard or a smuggler of human cargo. Too much information was missing for Malloy to try to guess at the truth, but this much he knew: his cover had been exposed. His face was known.
Malloy spent some time looking at the images of Chernoff that different agencies had collected over the years. She had distinctively Slavic features, but possessed the ability to alter her appearance radically. Weight gain and loss, hair colour,
and even age made her seem like something of a chameleon.
Finishing the slide show, Malloy stood and walked to the window of his hotel room and stared out at the last hour of night. Despite what Malloy had told Jane Harrison he was fairly sure Jack Farrell's criminal activities were limited to some overseas financial irregularities, usually in partnership with one of Giancarlo Bartoli's enterprises, most involving bankruptcy scams. The most notable example of such a partnership was the purchase of a high tech company in Milan that Jack Farrell and Giancarlo Bartoli had bought and then bled dry. The programme for such bankruptcies was to recover a great deal more than one invested and then file for bankruptcy, leaving others to incur the financial loss. On this occasion they had gutted the company and then sold it to their good friend Robert Kenyon.
What Jack Farrell had told Lord Kenyon about the enterprise Malloy had no way of knowing, but on paper, and with the benefit of hindsight, the deal looked like financial suicide. For some reason, Kenyon had loved the idea of acquiring this company and ended up burying himself in debt to finance the acquisition. Within a month of the deal's completion Kenyon was dead somewhere on the Eiger and the company was headed to bankruptcy court. Kenyon's widow, Kate, who had put ten million pounds of her own money into the venture, lost everything. The tally ran close to a tidy seventy-five million pounds against Kenyon's estate and required complete liquidation.
At the time of the purchase the company may have seemed to have had potential, or Robert Kenyon might not have understood some of the debt structure or vendor contracts. For Malloy these were red flags, especially as most of the vendor and service contracts connected in one way or another to companies in which Giancarlo Bartoli had a controlling interest. Add to this the company was top heavy with people who drew enormous salaries and were under ironclad contracts of employment - all known associates of Bartoli.
Kate Brand had never really understood the mechanics of the company's demise. She hadn't any experience in business at the time and precious little since. Aggravating the situation she had been in mourning and was of course still in shock at what had occurred on the Eiger. For an explanation of the financial disaster she had naively gone to her godfather, Giancarlo Bartoli, who apparently convinced her that certain pending contracts had fallen through because of Kenyon's death and for this reason the company was unable to survive. Bartoli's explanation fell short of the truth in nearly every respect.
Just over a year ago, whilst Kate and Ethan had been living in New York, Kate had approached Malloy and asked him to look into Kenyon's death. Malloy had met Kate and Ethan in Switzerland when the three of them had suddenly found themselves targeted by Julian Corbeau. With an eye to developing assets in Europe that would make him indispensable to Jane, Malloy said he was happy to have a look. At his request Kate presented him with all of the financials leading up to the bankruptcy, a rundown of Kenyon's friends and associates, his general business dealings, and even Kenyon's travel itinerary during the last year of his life. Much of the information came from private investigators who had failed to find a lead. Some came from Giancarlo Bartoli himself - elaborate and very professionally written reports from his company-owned security people. Some information came from Robert Kenyon's solicitor in London, the gentleman who had handled the liquidation of Kenyon's estate.
It had not taken Malloy long to settle on the motive for the murder: Kenyon's friends had swindled him out of his fortune and then murdered him before he realised the folly into which he had stepped. As far as he could see there were really only three suspects: Giancarlo Bartoli, Bartoli's son Luca, and Jack Farrell. They had all apparently profited from Lord Kenyon's investment, and they had all been in grave danger if Kenyon had lived long enough to understand what they had sold him.
When Malloy had made his preliminary report to Kate he was surprised at her response. She wasn't prepared to believe it. She wasn't entirely irrational about the matter: she knew what Giancarlo and Luca Bartoli were all about, she freely admitted to him that she had earned her way back to financial solvency after the bankruptcy through her association with Luca - making a fortune in stolen paintings. She insisted, however, that Robert Kenyon had been like a son to Giancarlo. As for Jack Farrell, he was not only a friend, he and Kenyon were first cousins, only children of two sisters who had managed to spend most of their summers together whilst the two boys were growing up. One summer would pass in Berlin. Another they might spend at Falsbury Hall in the West Country of England. For two summers they camped at the Farrell estate on the Gold Coast of Long Island. Another was spent in Paris where, at the tender age of thirteen, they had studied French each morning and haunted the Louvre in the afternoons. Their time together continued even after they had entered university, the most notable being a summer in Italy - this time without their mothers. It was on this trip that they stayed with Luca Bartoli at one of the Bartoli retreats. For Jack Farrell, whose father was a close friend of Giancarlo, this was the start of a friendship that would become a lifelong business partnership with the Bartoli family. For Kenyon it was the beginning of a casual but ongoing flirtation with the underworld.
The friendship of Jack Farrell, Robert Kenyon, and Luca Bartoli that began that summer continued until Kenyon's death. In fact all three young men had inherited a seat on the board of directors of a humanitarian organisation that called itself the Order of the Knights of the Holy Lance. Until those last few months, Kenyon, by far the poorest of the trio, had always kept his finances separate from the other two. Why had Kenyon suddenly decided to jettison the safe dull
investments that had supported his family for years to buy a high risk company in a high risk field? Kate could not say. She only knew Kenyon was excited at the prospect of 'turning the thing around' and had not seemed especially concerned about his ability to do so. He certainly profiled as someone addicted to risk in other aspects of his life. Maybe he had come to a point in his life where he wanted more and imagined that by succeeding with a shaky business venture he could earn the respect of his peers. His fortune, after all, was only substantial to someone who hadn't very much. In the circles in which Lord Kenyon ran he was poor relations - a man with more blood than money. He was starting a new life with a beautiful bride. His father-in-law possessed twice the fortune he had - all of it earned in the most dangerous business of all. Just maybe, Robert Kenyon had grown weary of life on an allowance, even a very generous one, and developed some raw ambition. If that was the case his old friends had used his ambition against him.
Kate wasn't buying the theory - not without proof. She insisted that both Jack Farrell and Giancarlo Bartoli had already had a great deal of legitimate money and were enjoying tremendous profits at the time - record-breaking profits, in fact. The amount of money involved in the alleged scam against Kenyon, seventy-five million pounds, was not a staggering sum to them, but it represented Robert's entire fortune. Robert was a man with influence. He had friends in high places. As a decorated war hero and an English peer, his influence could prove valuable to his friends, and that, she thought, was worth far more than seventy-five million pounds.
Malloy had never met anyone who had enough money, but Kate's argument had
some
validity. Besides, he could not understand why Giancarlo had included Kate in the assassination. She was Bartoli's goddaughter - his favourite, as it seemed. Her father and Giancarlo were not just business associates, they were old friends.
If
Bartoli had wanted to kill Robert Kenyon for some reason why not arrange it without involving Kate? That question led him to modify his theory.
Perhaps Giancarlo Bartoli was innocent. Perhaps Luca and Jack Farrell had arranged the swindle and murder. Luca had handled the romance and marriage of his 'sometime-girlfriend' with exceedingly good grace - perhaps with too much of it. Maybe there were emotions he did not care to show. Kate didn't believe this either. They had rekindled their affair briefly after Kenyon's death, she said, but it was mostly business between them.
Mostly
was a curious word, but Malloy had not pursued it. Besides, he had had a few of those kinds of affairs when he was a young man - and had lost a marriage in the process. Luca was married when all of this had taken place, and Kate had told him Luca was the kind of Italian who married for life. Kate said she had been a passing fancy, nothing more. And when Robert Kenyon came along, Luca stepped aside happily for the sake of his friend. Afterwards, living at the Bartoli farm in Majorca with Luca for several months to learn her trade, there had been 'a few nights', but nothing too serious. Malloy couldn't imagine it. Kate was anything but the kind of woman one enjoyed casually. Of course she had been younger then, something of the proverbial party girl with more money than good sense, and hardly more than a child. It was the Eiger that had made her the woman he knew - Eiger and a decade of risk-taking.