Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

She looked at Mark expectantly.

“Manhattan Portfolio Management—abbreviated MPM—belongs to Venture Capital SeaStarFriends Limited Partnership.”

“That’s impossible,” Alex said, shaking her head. “Some US citizen must be registered.”

“No, not according to applicable law. I talked to a lawyer who specializes in corporate law, and he confirmed it.” Mark excitedly leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Do you understand what this means? We found a connection to LMI! Funds launched in-house were invested in an offshore company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands called SeaStarFriends! Do you remember?”

Alex stared at him, speechless.

“Of course I do,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

“Now we only have to find out who’s behind SeaStarFriends,” Mark said, “and then we know whether Zack acts on his own account or on the orders of Vince Levy.”

He turned around as if expecting Zack to appear behind him.

“It’s quite obvious already,” he whispered. “LMI wouldn’t launch a fund with capital of five hundred million dollars to invest in a third-party venture-capital company. They want the money to stay in-house, after all.”

“Of course.”

Thousands of questions flooded Alex’s brain. It was impossible to find detailed information about a company incorporated in an offshore location because there were no mandatory disclosures or accounting rules so long as the company only did business with other companies outside that location.

“Well, there’s someone who’s a real expert when it comes to offshore companies,” Mark said, hesitating. Alex sighed.

“I know him too,” she answered, “but I doubt that he’ll help you once he finds out that I’m involved.”

“Oliver is my friend,” Mark said. “He can only say no.”

She didn’t feel comfortable asking Oliver Skerritt for a favor, but in the end her curiosity prevailed. She wanted to know who was making illegal money through her deals. The telephone rang.

“Answer it, Mark,” she said quickly. “If it’s Zack, tell him I just left.”

It was Zack. Alex smiled bitterly. The fish was still carefully but greedily circling the bait. She scribbled some notes on a piece of paper that Zack wouldn’t be able to miss when snooping around her office. Without a doubt, he had called just to see whether she was still there. He would wait a little longer and then come over to search her desk.

Have fun, Mr. St. John, Alex thought, stepping into the elevator with Mark. I hope you burn your fingers on this one!

Alex spent the next day in Baltimore trying to appease the management of Blue Steel. The PBA stock price had leveled off again at around eighteen and a half. This was probably due to her phone call to Rudensky, who had told his clients that she had pricked up her ears. So as not to ruin the deal completely, they had let go of their positions and the market calmed down.

Alex was completely exhausted when she arrived at her apartment that evening. She opened a bottle of Coors and walked out on the terrace. She called Mark on her cell phone in case Sergio had the land line tapped.

Time had passed since that incident with Sergio, and things had cooled off between them. She’d been extremely busy with work, and so had he.

Mark picked up after the second ring. Zack hadn’t been seen in his department or on the trading floor that day. Furthermore, Mark hadn’t been able to reach Oliver—who was still in Europe and wouldn’t be back in the city until the beginning of July.

Alex sincerely hoped that Zack was behind this all by himself. He surely had the means to pull off such an operation. He had many friends and informers in the world of big finance. On top of that, she knew that there were no limits to Zack’s greed for cash and his craving for recognition. But would he really risk betraying Levy, as well as Sergio?

The ringing of the telephone interrupted into her thoughts. The clock showed a few minutes after eleven. Just before the answering machine clicked on, Alex answered.

“Hello, cara .” It was Sergio, as if he knew that she was thinking about him. “How are you?”

“Not so good,” she replied. “I had a terrible day. I’ve probably lost a deal that I thought was wrapped up.”

“What kind of deal?” he asked. Was he pretending, or did he really not know about it? Alex realized that she didn’t trust him at all anymore.

“Blue Steel and PBA Steel,” she said. “Everything was all worked out, and I even told Levy about it. But yesterday, the price of PBA more than doubled in no time. I was in Baltimore all day, but I didn’t know what else to tell these Blue Steel people. And on top of it, I’m afraid that the SEC will get involved. It looks like we tried to drive up the price in order to earn higher fees!”

“Don’t worry about the SEC.”

Alex straightened up in her chair.

“What do you mean? The SEC has initiated investigations on much less before.”

“I mean it just like I said. Forget the SEC.”

Forget the SEC! She would have loved to ask him directly about SeaStarFriends, but his involvement in MPM was just speculation at this point. Sergio wasn’t a banker, but he knew enough about business to fear the Securities and Exchange Commission, which monitored the trading of all securities. Especially if he knew that MPM and LMI were trading on insider information. Was his carelessness an indication of his naiveté or the exact opposite? Since her conversation with Nick Kostidis on Christmas at the Downeys’ house, she’d thought about him many times. To her annoyance, she realized that she was listening for revealing undertones in every one of Sergio’s words. She hadn’t seen Kostidis since then, but she still owed her nagging guilty conscience to him—which she could have done without. She was relieved that Sergio was still in Chicago. When he said good-bye after fifteen minutes and said he’d get in touch when he was back in the city, it sounded almost like a threat.

Sergio had been in Las Vegas for the past three days and was extremely satisfied with the deal he had finally closed after long and tenacious negotiations. In addition to the Gold Nugget, the Pyramid, and the Southern Cross, he now also owned the fourth-largest luxury hotel on the Las Vegas Strip: the Venice. The negotiations had been tough, but Angelo Canaletti—the last offspring of the once important Canaletti family from New York, which had relocated to the West in the 1960s—lacked any sense for business. He had gotten too comfortable with his excessive lifestyle. He’d run the gold mine of the Meridian, with its six hundred beds and enormous casino, completely into the ground with his disastrous management. He was in deep because he owed millions of dollars to the IRS. This purchase was a bargain for Sergio; it just required some patience. After finishing the contract, he finally cemented his position of dominance in Las Vegas. Profits from the casinos were sizable and crisis-proof sources of income.

However, his meeting in Vegas with Jorge Alvarez Ortega had been much more important. Ortega had become the undisputed number one of the powerful Colombian drug cartel in Medellín after the violent death of Emilio Arqueros a few months prior. The negotiations with Ortega concerned the import of cocaine to the US. Due to Sergio’s newly consolidated influence at the Brooklyn port, he was the only person who could guarantee Ortega a risk-free import of drugs from Colombia. The old routes via Florida or Mexico were too risky, and many couriers had been busted. But Sergio’s people knew how to smuggle illegal drugs directly into New York in front of the customs agents and the police without any problems.