Sam Bourne - The Chosen One

As Maggie suspected, the CIA.

Judd wasn’t done. ‘That was its prior use. Two years ago it shifted ownership. It is now entirely at the service of a single client.’

‘What kind of client?’

‘One time. I will not repeat this, you understand? Premier runs private jets exclusively for AitkenBruce.’

Maggie couldn’t repress her surprise. ‘AitkenBruce? The bank?’

But Judd was in no mood for discussion. He had one more fact to convey. ‘Today Premier submitted another flight plan. They have a Gulfstream 550 jet departing Teterboro, New Jersey for Washington Reagan at nineteen hundred hours. Looking back through the flight history, there’s only one person who makes that journey on that aircraft. And that’s the chairman of the bank.’

New York, JFK Airport, Monday March 27, 16.25

Maggie’s thoughts whirled. A bank? What on earth could any of this have to do with a bank? And AitkenBruce speci fically. It made no sense. Forbes had no connection with finance in any form. What possible-

The phone she had bought in Aberdeen vibrated, making her jump.

Restricted.

But no one knew this number. And why would they call the second she had finished speaking to Judd? Had someone been listening in, waiting to pounce?

She picked up the device as if it were coated in poison, pressing the green button to answer the call, but saying nothing. And then she heard that voice.

‘Maggie? Is that you?’

Uri.

Panic flooded through her. She spoke fast, thinking of Stuart and Nick and the curse that seemed to leave all those she touched dead. ‘Don’t call this number again. Give me a number where I can call you.’

Her abruptness shocked him; a sudden wariness in his voice, he replied, ‘I’m in an edit suite. The number is, hang on, what is the number here?’ There was a second voice, barely audible. Hurry. Eventually, Uri gave her the number; Maggie scribbled it down, then ordered him to hang up.

She binned the phone she’d used to call Judd, though the waste of a perfectly good phone went against her entire upbringing, picked another and called Uri back.

‘Maggie, what the fuck is going on?’

‘It’s a long-’

‘Don’t tell me: “It’s a long story.”’

‘Seriously, Uri. Anyone who talks to me is in danger. Grave danger.’

‘Come on, Maggie, that’s a bit melodramatic. There’s-’

‘Remember my friend Nick? He was killed last night.’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Jesus. I’m sorry, Maggie.’

‘I so want to talk, Uri. Just to have a chance to talk. For as long as we like.’

‘Where are you?’

She hesitated. She knew it made no sense to say it out loud. But it was a virgin phone; it should be safe. ‘I’m at JFK.’

‘I’m coming. Right now.’

She tried to argue, insisting it was too far, there was no time, but he bulldozed through her resistance the way she allowed him and no one else to do. By the time she had told him exactly where she was sitting, he was already in a cab.

Her pulse was throbbing now, with a new, gentler kind of fear. How long since she had seen Uri? Not since the inauguration; more than two months. She looked at her reflection in the window: she hardly recognized herself. And there was so much they hadn’t said.

She turned back to the computer, still open at Nick’s Googledocs account. Focus, she told herself. Focus. There was only one thing she was meant to think about now. She went to the search field and typed ‘AitkenBruce’.

She had heard of the bank, of course; everyone had. It was famous for its squillionaire traders and executives, rewarding themselves with telephone number salaries and even fatter bonuses. But how it could be caught up in all this, she couldn’t imagine.

Google led her to AitkenBruce’s own website. It was full of corporate puff: pictures of smiling employees – most of whom seemed to be either young, female or black, projecting an image of perfectly inclusive diversity – and blurbs about the generous philanthropic activity the ‘AitkenBruce family’ was engaged in around the globe. She clicked out of it almost immediately.

A fresh search revealed a long piece in the Sunday Times magazine, headlined: ‘The True Masters of the Universe: Inside the World’s Richest Bank’.

She scanned the first few paragraphs, which revealed an institution with more cash in its coffers than many governments, one whose assets topped a trillion dollars and whose top brass routinely went on to take up posts in the commanding heights of the world’s economies. At any one time, the ranks of the AitkenBruce old boys’ association would include either a US Treasury Secretary, German finance minister or head of the European Central Bank – and sometimes all three at once.

Now there was a chunk of more familiar stuff about mind-boggling pay. ‘Last year, Chairman and Chief Executive Roger Waugh took home a staggering $73m, to add to the $600m he already owns in AitkenBruce stock,’ the magazine reported, before detailing the yachts moored in Monaco and apartments overlooking Central Park, the private islands in Dubai and country estates in Oxfordshire, owned by the bank’s senior management.

The article explained that men this rich used their money in part to insulate themselves from those who were poorer than they were, which essentially meant everyone. ‘Forcefielding’, they called it: never flying commercial, but only by private jet; never stepping in a taxi, still less public transport, but seeing the world only through the tinted windows of a Lincoln Town Car.

Maggie scrolled down, looking for anything which might connect AitkenBruce to Forbes, let alone explain why a Company jet might have been despatched to New Orleans to assist in his murder. Had Forbes, in some earlier incarnation perhaps, been a corporate whistleblower? Or had he been blackmailing the bank as well as the President?

She lingered over the section which detailed how AitkenBruce made its vast fortune. For one thing, these bankers worked all hours, never taking holidays, often staying in the office so late there would be no time to go home before morning. For another, AitkenBruce didn’t waste its time with the little guy: its customers were governments, from Europe to the Persian Gulf, multinational mega-corporations and only the very richest individuals – a reclusive billionaire stashing his fortune in some Caribbean hideaway, a Saudi sheikh or even the reviled rules of an unstable rogue state.

But knowledge was its secret weapon. If an investor was thinking about getting into, say, timber, AitkenBruce could help because it counted the world’s biggest timber companies among its corporate clients. In addition, major investors in the same field were probably also paying the bank for its advice, so the bank knew what they were up to, too. AitkenBruce had every angle covered, which could only help when the bank came to decide how to invest its own money. The article quoted an unnamed critic saying that investing in a world that included AitkenBruce was like gambling in a casino where the house knows every hand at the table: you might pick up a few dollars, but the house wins every time.

She scrolled past the section detailing the stellar career of the bank’s alumni, stopping at a photograph of Waugh, the boss. He was fiftyish, bald and nothing to look at. If the caption had read ‘Accountant living in New Jersey’, it would have been utterly plausible. And yet here was the top man. If anyone knew what connected AitkenBruce to Forbes, it surely would be him.

She skipped back a few paragraphs. ‘No one doubts the extraordinary access and influence of an institution like AitkenBruce. Its links to the White House are solid-’ Maggie glanced at the date: the story had been written nearly a year before Stephen Baker had been elected. ‘And the bank will be watching the coming presidential contest closely. Once again, the moneymen are covering all their bases. Quarterly figures published by the Federal Election Commission confirm that Waugh and his fellow honchos at AitkenBruce gave hefty donations to both Democrats and Republicans.’