Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

“Have you seen this before, Zack?” Sergio showed him the piece of paper that Luca had found in Alex’s apartment. Zack glanced at it briefly and then shrugged his shoulders.

“No, I haven’t,” he answered.

“We found this in Alex Sontheim’s apartment.”

Hatred flared in Zack’s eyes.

“Alex,” he said, grinding his teeth angrily, “that miserable bitch.”

“Can you explain how she got her hands on a bank statement from Levy & Villiers?”

“No, I can’t,” Zack snapped. “I’ve got nothing to do with her. That backstabbing snake fucked me over! Ever since she arrived, I’ve played the fool!”

“You’re not in league with her behind our backs by chance?”

This question bewildered Zack even further.

“Never in a million years!” he exclaimed. “I hate that woman!”

“Okay.” Sergio folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

Zack sank down in the chair and buried his face in his hands. “No one will ever talk to me again,” he said despondently. “They’ll all point their fingers at me and whisper to each other when they see me. I’ll be a pariah.”

“Stop pitying yourself!” Levy snarled at him. “You put us in this situation in the first place!”

“No!” Zack roared. “She provoked me to do it! And you left me high and dry! Now you want me to put my neck on the line so that you can keep your names out of this! But I won’t accept it!”

“Think about it,” Sergio said with an almost pitying smile. “It’s not the end of the world. You’ll forget all of this when you’re under a palm tree somewhere in the Caribbean with a beautiful girl in your arms, contemplating how long you’ll have to live to spend all your money.”

Zack stared at him silently and was about to respond, but then he changed his mind and shrugged his shoulders.

“Okay,” he mumbled quietly. “Okay. Okay.”

He turned around and left the office. Sergio stepped to the window and stared out into the night. What kind of game was Alex playing? He believed St. John when he said he wasn’t collaborating with her. His hatred was genuine. Alex must have gotten her hands on those secret bank statements some other way. How could he have underestimated her so? Chaos reigned in Sergio’s head. Had he mentioned something to her himself? Different possibilities presented themselves, only to quickly fall apart again.

He turned to Levy. “Can you check whether any bank statements have been accessed in Georgetown?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ll have to ask Monaghan.”

“Do that. Call him.” Sergio sat down again.

When Levy reached his head of security, he turned on the speakerphone so Sergio could listen to the conversation.

“The commercial registry has been changed,” Monaghan said. “The new owners are Mr. Zachary George St. John and Ms.—”

“Okay, okay,” Levy cut him off, and explained the next looming catastrophe. “Henry, is it possible to get into a computer from the outside to print out bank statements?”

“Theoretically, yes,” LMI’s head of security said pensively. “A clever hacker could access the server, but we’d notice such an intrusion. We put very strict security systems in place.”

“Could you find out whether someone hacked into the server at Levy & Villiers on July 6?”

“I can try,” Monaghan answered.

After the conversation ended, Sergio fell into a deep brooding silence. He had found a clean solution for St. John’s screw-up. He wasn’t worried about that anymore. It was far more important to find out how much Alex actually knew. He had to speak to her immediately. He knew that she had met that dumb journalist just two weeks ago. A cruel smile played on Sergio’s lips. He knew Skerritt’s address and decided that it was time to pay the man a visit.

Oliver winced when his cell phone rang and answered the call immediately.

“Hey, buddy,” Justin said, “I found out a few things. It looks like the shit has hit the fan on Wall Street.”

Alex leaned forward. She, Oliver, and Mark had called Justin and asked for information about MPM’s activities in Whithers stock. For two hours, they’d been waiting for his call back at the Italian trattoria across from Oliver’s apartment building. The three of them had deliberated all evening over how to proceed. Oliver handed his phone to Alex.

“MPM bought 2.6 million shares of Whithers Computers over the past six weeks,” Justin said, “at an average price of thirty-eight dollars a share.”

Alex quickly estimated the sum in her head. She had assumed that Zack would buy ten million dollars of stock, but it seemed that he’d bought ten times that amount.

“Just like you said,” Justin continued, “the deal is off and Whithers stock has crashed over the last few hours. It closed at twenty-nine and a quarter, which means that MPM has lost thirty million so far. It looks like it’ll be much more.”

Oliver and Mark looked at Alex expectantly.

“No one will touch Whithers tomorrow,” Alex said slowly. “The stock crashed and MPM must regain its position in the morning. They won’t be able to get it done. There’s no way that they’ll get a hundred million together.”

“Which means what?”

“MPM is bankrupt. There’ll be an SEC investigation. And they’ll find out who’s behind MPM.”

“Levy and Vitali…”

“Exactly,” Alex said. “I can’t imagine that they’ll risk it. Levy will go to jail for ten years.”

“What could they do to prevent that?”

“Not much.” Alex pondered his question. “Maybe change the owners.”

Suddenly, she sensed something disastrous brewing behind her back. Zack would blame her alone for the Whithers deal blowing up. Sergio wasn’t on her side. It was two to one against her at the very least. Because no one knew yet how much she had found out, their best solution was to pin all the blame on her. Then she would be in for insider trading—big time.

“I’ll check it out,” Justin said and hung up. Alex briefly reported to Mark and Oliver what Justin had told her. While the two of them discussed the news, Alex was thinking intensely. Then she sat upright.

“I need to talk to Zack immediately,” she said.

“But why?” Mark asked. “He hates you like the plague since the Syncrotron deal.”

“I don’t care how much of an asshole he is,” Alex said as she stood up. “The pressure’s on him too. I had no idea he would buy that much stock.”

“Okay,” Oliver said, “but you won’t go alone. We’ll come with you.”

Mark signaled for the waiter and paid, and then they left the restaurant.

“Let me get my wallet. I left it in my apartment,” Oliver said.

While Oliver went inside, Alex and Mark waited at the building’s entrance.

“Zack will be absolutely furious,” Mark said. “I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to speak with him. What are you trying to get out of it?”

“Damn it, Mark, I thought that he’d lose five or ten million, but a hundred million is—” The sentence caught in Alex’s throat as she watched a black limousine drive up the street.

“What is it?” Mark asked.

“Come inside, quick!” Alex pulled him into the hallway.

The limousine stopped directly in front of the building.

“What’s wrong?” Mark didn’t understand what was going on, but he followed her up the stairs. They ran into Oliver in front of his apartment.

“Sergio is here!” Alex exclaimed. Oliver immediately opened the door, and they sought refuge inside the apartment. Seconds later, the doorbell started buzzing like crazy. The three of them looked helplessly at one another.

“Police, open the door!” they heard a voice shout, and then someone banged a fist on the door. “Open the door or we’ll break it down!”