Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon #22) (107)
She opened her recents, found the number for Phillip’s burner, and dialed. The background whir of the Sikorsky’s turboshaft engines told her that he had not yet departed East Hampton Airport.
“Have you read the article?” she asked.
“I’m reading it now.”
“I can’t face this alone.”
“What are you saying?”
“Don’t leave without me,” said Lindsay, and snatched her car keys from the kitchen counter.
The chartered Bell 407 was over the waters of Long Island Sound when Evelyn Buchanan’s article popped onto Gabriel’s phone. He skimmed it quickly and was relieved to find that neither his name nor Sarah’s appeared in the text. Neither, for that matter, did Magdalena’s. Her allegations were attributed to an unnamed freelance employee of Masterpiece Art Ventures. There was no mention of her gender or nationality. For the moment, at least, she was in the clear. Phillip Somerset, however, was finished.
Voice calls were prohibited onboard the helicopter, so Gabriel shot a text message to Yuval Gershon and requested an update on Phillip’s position. Yuval’s reply appeared a minute later. Phillip was still on the tarmac at East Hampton Airport.
“Why hasn’t he left yet?” asked Sarah over the drone of the Bell’s engines.
“It seems Lindsay has had a change of heart. She called him two minutes ago and told him not to leave until she arrived.”
“Perhaps it’s time you had that chat with the FBI.”
“I’m afraid there’s a complicating factor.”
“Only one?”
“Magdalena is there, too.”
The helicopter remained over Long Island Sound until they reached the old Horton Point Light, where a turn to starboard carried them over the town of Southold and the waters of Peconic Bay. A ferry was crossing the narrow channel separating Shelter Island and North Haven. On the eastern shore of the peninsula, Phillip’s now-abandoned estate was ablaze with light.
“It looks as though Lindsay left in a hurry,” said Sarah.
They passed over Sag Harbor and commenced their descent toward East Hampton Airport. Directly beneath them, a white Range Rover was headed toward the airfield along Daniels Hole Road. It was Lindsay Somerset, thought Gabriel. And she was definitely in a hurry.
She made the final turn into the airport with deliberate care. Hand-over-hand on the steering wheel, a gentle acceleration mid-arc. Just the way her father had taught her when she was a girl of fourteen. The gate at the edge of the tarmac was open. The guard waved her through. Magdalena stood next to the Sikorsky; Phillip, at the open rear door of his Range Rover. He hoisted an arm in greeting, as though waving from the deck of his sailboat. Lindsay switched off the headlights, put her foot to the floor, and closed her eyes.
Part Four
Unveiling
71
East Hampton
The call came through on the emergency line of the East Hampton Town Police Department at 9:55 p.m. Sergeant Bruce Logan, a twenty-year veteran of the department and lifelong resident of the East End, braced himself for the worst. It was Mike Knox calling from the airport.
“Helicopter or plane?” asked Logan.
“Actually, it was two Range Rovers.”
“Fender bender in the parking lot?”
“Fatality on the tarmac.”
“You’re shitting me, Mike.”
“I wish.”
The department’s headquarters were located on the southern edge of the airfield, on Wainscott Road, and the first officers arrived at the scene just three minutes after the initial call. They found the victim, a white male in his mid-fifties, lying on the tarmac in a bay of his own blood, his legs nearly severed, surrounded by several hundred carefully packaged five-hundred-gram gold ingots. The driver of the vehicle that had struck the man was an attractive, fit-looking woman in her thirties. She wore leggings, a Lululemon hoodie, and neon-green Nikes. She had no wallet and seemed unable to recall her name. Mike Knox supplied it for her. The woman was Lindsay Somerset. The dead guy with the nearly severed legs was her husband, a rich investor of some sort who owned a weekend palace in North Haven.
Death was formally declared, an arrest was made, a statement was issued. The news broke at midnight on WINS radio, and by nine the following morning it was all anyone was talking about. The real estate mogul Sterling Dunbar was in the shower when he learned that Lindsay Somerset had run down her scoundrel of a husband; the retailer Simon Levinson, still in his bed. Ellis Gray of JPMorgan Chase, having endured a sleepless night after reading the Vanity Fair story, was in his office overlooking Park Avenue. Two hours later he informed senior management that the firm was now on the hook for $436 million in loans issued to Masterpiece Art Ventures—loans that, in all likelihood, had been collateralized with forged paintings. Senior management accepted Gray’s resignation, effective immediately.
By midday the FBI had assumed control of the investigation. Agents searched Phillip’s homes, sealed his warehouse, and raided his offices on East Fifty-Third Street. The firm’s three female art experts were taken to Federal Plaza and questioned at length. All denied any knowledge of financial or art-related impropriety. Kenny Vaughan, Phillip’s wingman from his days at Lehman Brothers, was nowhere to be found. Agents seized his computers and printed files and issued a warrant for his arrest.