He smelled Julie’s warm, soft skin, caught himself wondering what it would be like to make love to a girl with a spike in her ear, and stopped himself. He straightened up and looked at Demarkian, who was hanging back and half-concentrating on the state of the ocean. The state of the ocean was flat. Mark coughed.
“Mr. Demarkian?”
“Mr. Demarkian wants us to make a flare to call the Coast Guard with,” Julie said.
Mark leaned closer to Julie’s ear and whispered. “Aren’t we going to tell him about the other thing?” he asked her. “Isn’t this the perfect time?”
“I don’t know.”
They both looked over at Gregor Demarkian, who was looking more distracted by the second. Mark was sure Demarkian hadn’t heard a word they’d said, even though they were close and they hadn’t been whispering all that softly. Mark drew in his breath and coughed again.
“Mr. Demarkian?”
“Excuse me,” Gregor Demarkian said, shaking his head. He gazed back at the water again and then seemed to force himself to look their way. He smiled, but the smile seemed surreal. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go downstairs.”
“Below,” Julie said automatically.
“You can go below in a minute,” Mark said, “Julie and I—”
Gregor Demarkian cut him off. “There’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask somebody,” he said. “I don’t know if you two are necessarily the ones to ask, but we’ll see. This deal that Baird Financial is doing with Europabanc. It was in gear before Jon Baird was indicted on insider trading charges? Not just before he went to jail, mind you, but before he was indicted?”
“Oh, yes,” Mark said. “Well before. A couple of years at least.”
“A couple of years in negotiation?”
“We went into serious negotiation with Europabanc for the first time about three months before Uncle Jon was indicted.”
Gregor nodded. “And Europabanc didn’t mind. They didn’t care they were going to get a jailbird as head of the firm.”
“Of course Europabanc didn’t mind,” Mark said. “The charges weren’t all that serious anyway—they weren’t even really a felony. The only reason Jon was in jail for over a year is that the judge got exasperated and made him serve his sentences consecutively. And what he went to jail for isn’t even illegal in Switzerland and France and the other places Europabanc operates. Even not paying your income taxes isn’t illegal in Switzerland. They just think we’re nuts.”
“And when the indictment came down, there was never any suggestion that someone else at the firm might be implicated? Your Uncle Calvin, for instance?”
“If there had been, I’d have known the charges were bogus,” Mark snorted. “Uncle Calvin, for God’s sake. Uncle Calvin is such a tight-assed old maid, he wouldn’t—”
“Mark,” Julie said.
“Well, he is,” Mark said stubbornly. “Mr. Demarkian only wants to know. What he should know is that the SEC and the people from Morgenthau’s office came in and investigated us to death over the course of three months and didn’t find a thing.”
“Except for what they discovered about your Uncle Jon,” Gregor pointed out.
Mark Anderwahl shook his head vigorously. “They didn’t discover a thing about Uncle Jon,” he insisted. “All they had on Uncle Jon was the records of four transactions through a blind account in the Cayman Islands and those were handed to them. I mean they showed up at Morgenthau’s office in the mail.”
“Recent transactions?” Gregor asked.
Mark shrugged. “I think so. I think they were maybe four or five months old when the investigators got hold of them. But there was no corroboration at the office, Mr. Demarkian, and there was no evidence of anybody else having been pulling any junk. We run a pretty tight ship at Baird Financial.”
“Ah,” Gregor Demarkian said.
Julie leaned forward. “Now we want to talk to you,” she told him, and Mark nodded behind her approvingly. “We discussed it between ourselves last night and we think—”
“Excuse me,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“Where are you going?” Mark Anderwahl said.
“Julie will tell you all about the flare,” Gregor called back to them over his shoulder.
Mark stared after him, nonplussed. “What was that all about?” he demanded of Julie. “I thought we were going to talk to him. Didn’t you tell him we had something important to say?”
“I wanted to leave it until we could tell him together,” Julie said. Then she went to the rail by herself and looked out over it. It was high back here and perfectly safe. Mark found himself feeling a little relieved to see that she wasn’t looking as sick as she had been.