“Good.” He sipped at his champagne. “What’s troubling you, Finn?”
“Ed Perry—and Karasek.” The second name caught Alex’s attention. Finn quickly explained the events of the last week, including the contents of the memory stick. Alex listened intently but without judgment. Finn ended by saying, “Naturally, I need to find out what they’re after, and I need to deal with it.”
“And you want revenge.” Finn offered him a puzzled expression, asking what it was he needed revenge for. “The boy was a friend of yours, no?”
It seemed odd to say it, because he’d met him just a few times, but Finn said, “Yeah, I suppose he was. I’ll be honest, killing Perry and Karasek seems like the only way of guaranteeing I’ll be left alone, but you’re right, they deserve to die for what they’ve done this week.”
“As a rule, I think one only ever needs one good reason for killing a man, but if having two eases your conscience, so be it.”
“Aren’t you concerned about your name appearing there—the numbered accounts?”
Alex smiled. “Karasek is a bitter man and I’ve had several successes which he might have believed were at his expense. He’d be afraid to challenge me directly, but if he could find something, anything to discredit me, he would.”
“You don’t seem unduly concerned.”
“You remember we had a great conversation once, you and I, about how the Russian oligarchs were no different to the American robber barons of the nineteenth century, making money in dangerous times. We took risks, and you took some of those risks with me, for which I will always be grateful, but now we are no longer robber barons, we are part of the establishment. Karasek can do nothing to harm me.”
Alex was flattering Finn, both in the part he’d played in his robber-baron past, and in the extent to which he was now part of the establishment. But the real difference between them was that Perry and Karasek didn’t fear Finn, and they could hurt more than his reputation if they decided to do so.
Alex got up and crossed the room to the champagne, bringing the bottle over to top up their glasses, then taking it back to the ice bucket.
“Paranoia is a possibility,” said Alex. “I heard Karasek was working on something, I don’t know what, but a comeback of some sort, and he’s a paranoid man. They would have known about your involvement with Sparrowhawk . . .”
“But Sparrowhawk failed—okay, it ruined Perry’s career, but if anything, it left Karasek even stronger.”
“It doesn’t matter. They knew the intent, and you know, there have been many rumors in the last six years, suggesting you never left.”
Finn smiled. “If I hadn’t left I’d be putting in a call to Louisa Whitman, because that’s who I’d like to see right now, but I don’t have those contacts anymore.”
“You want to meet Louisa? Let me see what I can do.” In response to Finn’s bemused expression, Alex added, “As I said, I’m part of the establishment now.”
He walked to the door, called a name, and had a brief conversation with someone in Russian. He came back into the room then and said, “There is another possibility, of course.”
“You think he’s still bitter about the girl?”
“No, that hadn’t occurred to me, but you could be right.”
There was a pause as Alex sipped at his champagne, and Finn said, “About Katerina . . .”
Alex smiled. “We said we’d never talk of her again. You want to know what happened to her now, of all times?”
“No, you’re right.” It was a complication he didn’t need, that was certainly true. “You’ve thought of another motive?”
“Yes, the numbered accounts. Maybe it’s all about the money.”
“You think they’d go to all this trouble for that? And Karasek, why would he need—”
Alex wagged his finger, a playful admonishment, as he said, “Karasek’s finances were never as strong as they appeared. He’s an Estonian—he never had access to the commodities and natural resources that were available to us. I understand much of his wealth was leveraged, built on debt, and during the credit crisis many of those debts were called in. It’s one of the reasons he had to leave Tallinn and move to . . . Of course, Helsinki.”
“So that’s it—you think all this could be about money.”
“Isn’t everything?” He shrugged. “Karasek and Perry probably have some idea of the business we did together—it could be a combined operation, ostensibly investigating my concerns, trying to undermine me, but finding the means to refinance in the process.”
A suited guy knocked and came in, not the same one who’d opened the door to Finn earlier. He handed Alex a piece of paper, gave a small bow of the head to Finn, and left.
Alex looked at the paper and said, “She’s having an early dinner at the Berkeley hotel, Marcus Wareing’s restaurant. The table name is Adams. If you go there about eight thirty, she’ll see you.”