The Flight Attendant(87)

“No. In this case, the FBI was already looking into the company because of the investors. Who they are.”

“I see.”

“But they may have been investigating Sokolov himself. Maybe he was mismanaging the fund: taking a little extra for himself. Or maybe, like I said, it was a Ponzi scheme. Maybe he was only delivering the returns these folks had come to expect by bringing new people into the fund, and he finally went too far.”

“Why would the FBI care if he’s only stealing from Russians and the money’s in the Caribbean?”

“Unisphere is an American company, and Sokolov may have been committing fraud. For all we know, some of the Russian investors live in America and are totally clean.”

“And so he thinks it was some Russian thug who killed Alex?”

“Could be,” said Ani. “Remember: you mislead those guys or you steal from those guys and you’re a dead man.”

“The Internet trolls have been saying for days that Alex was a spy. Is that still possible?”

“Yes, very possible. If Sokolov wasn’t a crook or playing fast and loose with other people’s money, then perhaps he was an embedded operative.”

“For us?”

“Or them. If us, Unisphere is his cover because we know who some of the investors are and we know of their connections to the Russian president. If them, Unisphere is his cover because he can live and work easily in the U.S. and then meet without suspicion with these folks. He can be their little messenger boy or—I guess this is the term they use—courier. So that fellow you met in seat two C? He was just as likely one of ours as he was one of theirs. Or maybe he was playing both sides. My guy says that’s a possibility, too. Maybe that’s how he got himself killed. Nothing’s ever really black or white, is it? Maybe he was just a little nasty.”

Cassie thought about this, about the man she had slept with in Dubai. “But Ani? He didn’t seem like a crook or a nasty guy. I’ve met my share of—forgive me—pricks, and he didn’t seem like one.”

“Well, if you’re stealing, you don’t want to advertise that now, do you? Same with being a spy. You don’t exactly give out business cards with your real occupation.”

“I guess not,” Cassie agreed.

“Now, Sokolov left behind none of the footprints that scream spook. No Langley, no State Department connections, no friends at embassies.”

“But he did have family that originally came from the Soviet Union.”

“Yes.”

“So maybe it’s more likely he was a Russian spy,” Cassie murmured.

“Maybe. Now”—Ani paused, clearing her throat—“we do have the full coroner’s report from Dubai.”

Cassie noticed how her lawyer had halted briefly midsentence, the way she had almost reflexively stalled. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s actually pretty good. It really is. But there are also some wrinkles that are curious.”

She rested her forehead in her hand and closed her eyes. She waited.

“The body was found at five in the afternoon. The blood was mostly dry. Apparently gastric emptying time is four hours, maybe five because of the alcohol, and his stomach was completely empty. So, he was definitely killed before one in the afternoon, and probably before noon. Probably before lunch. But the room was sixty-five degrees. The body really wasn’t—forgive me—bubbling up. It wasn’t bloated, and it was just starting to decompose.”

She shuddered, unsure whether it was general disgust or sadness at the specificity of Sokolov’s mortal deterioration. “This all sounds promising,” she said, “though forgive me if I can’t get overly excited at the vision of the poor guy’s body decomposing in the bed where we slept.”

“It is promising. Focus on that. If Dubai wants to prosecute or the Sokolov family wants to go after you in civil court, you can argue convincingly that he was still alive when you left the room. They can’t prove otherwise.”

“Well, okay then,” Cassie said, but she knew the truth. If she needed a defense, like so much else in her life, its foundation would be a lie. She wondered if her voice was as dead in reality as it sounded in her head. She understood all too well why this news hadn’t made her happier.

“But here’s the thing,” Ani continued. “According to the report, this was done—and this is my word, not theirs—professionally. Whoever killed Alex slashed the carotid artery. Knew right where it was. They severed the trachea. He was gone in thirty seconds. I’m sure, Cassie, you are completely capable of killing a person with a knife or broken bottle or even a letter opener while he’s asleep, but it would not be so—forgive me—efficient. So surgical. It would not happen so fast. Do you even know where the carotid artery is?”

She stared down at the swirls in the Oriental carpet below her. She saw her toes in her sandals. The pink of the nail polish. “No. I really don’t.”

“I mean, even if this was one of your worst blackout moments ever and you really did kill the guy, I think it would have been pretty damn messy.”

“It was pretty damn messy.”

“Let me rephrase that. There would have been punctures and gashes and defense wounds on his hands and his arms, because he would have woken up and fought you. There were none. You would have been plunging that broken bottle into his chest, his face. That didn’t happen.”