The Flight Attendant

  She wished that Ani would call her back. She’d called the lawyer the moment she was inside the terminal and left a message.

  This was water torture, she decided, this slow, relentless drip. The authorities had to work backward to get to her: they had to rule out all of the women he might have already known in the city and all of the women living there it was possible that he had met. They had to show those photos to all of his friends and all of his business associates. They were probably showing them to the people he worked with at Unisphere in America. And so it felt like it was taking forever for them to, once and for all, focus only on her.

  But she knew this: whatever was coming was getting closer.

  * * *

  « «

  When she got home, she finally connected with Ani. She rolled her suitcase into her bedroom and collapsed onto the couch to look up at the Empire State Building through windows speckled with city grime and summer grit. The sky was blue, however, and though it was August now and the days were noticeably shorter than a month ago, the sun was still high.

  “How was Rome?” Ani asked.

  “Not glamorous. I stayed at the hotel. I didn’t feel like going out.” She took a breath and said, “I’ve seen the pictures on the New York Post website.”

  “Yup. They weren’t online yet when I called you. But I’ve seen them, too. I rather doubt it will be a front-page story in the paper edition tomorrow. It was Dubai, after all.”

  “That’s the bright side.”

  “Yes. But I have good news.”

  And instantly she knew what Ani was about to say, and she closed her eyes and realized she was crying. Again. And she didn’t care. It was as if she had just gotten a call from a doctor about a biopsy and it was negative, and the doctor was explaining that she didn’t have cancer. “Go on,” she said.

  “Highly unlikely you’ll be extradited. That amendment I told you about? An American citizen is indeed exempt.”

  “That means I could only be extradited to Dubai if I weren’t American?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, then, what’s next?”

  “Call back the FBI, but tell them nothing. Nothing. Say things like I don’t remember. Let me think about it. If they insist on seeing you—and they might—I’ll go with you and we’ll meet with them together.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Want to see you? I think a lot depends on who Alex Sokolov really was or how well connected the family really is. Frankly, I’m more than a little shocked that the FBI seems to be so deeply involved. I’ve done my homework now, and Dubai doesn’t need the FBI. They’re not amateurs. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve also done a little more research into Sokolov.”

  Cassie held her phone against her ear with her shoulder and blew her nose almost silently. “And?”

  “And everything suggests he really was a hedge fund manager. Yes, he’s based in New York, but all the money runs through the Caribbean.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It could mean nothing. It could mean anything. Whenever the money goes through a place like Grand Cayman, you have to wonder. The U.S. can’t track it as easily—if at all. The Treasury Department has something called an OFAC list. It’s a whole bunch of seriously sketchy foreign nationals or groups, and American banks or funds can’t accept money from any of them. So if you want to work with those characters, you have to work through the Caribbean.”

  “So he was doing something shady?” Cassie asked. “The FBI believes he was involved with people on that list?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that why he was killed?”

  “Well, we wouldn’t kill him for that. If he was doing something illegal, I kind of think we’d just arrest him.”

  “So why did…they…kill him?”

  “Maybe he was stealing,” Ani answered, and Cassie found herself relieved that the lawyer hadn’t begun her response, even in jest, with something along the lines of Assuming you didn’t kill him? “You know, skimming off the top,” she continued. “Or maybe he was running some Ponzi scheme and he went too far. Got in too deep.”

  “Good God, if no one slashed Bernie Madoff’s throat, why would the investors take out poor Alex? What he did had to have been small potatoes by comparison.”

  “We don’t know it was small potatoes. We just don’t. There could be a lot of Russian money in that fund. You don’t steal from the Russians. I’m Armenian, trust me. I know. They can be seriously badass.”

  “He just didn’t seem like the type.”

  “When people need money or love money, they sometimes make very bad decisions,” she reminded Cassie. Then: “The family published his first full obituary. You can find it online. It’s in the Charlottesville Progress. Here are a few things I learned that are not in the obit: Grandfather emigrated here from the Soviet Union when Stalin was still Stalin: 1951. Unsure precisely how. He was a soldier in the Second World War. Self-made man after he got here. Settled in Virginia. Became a lawyer and married a good southern girl with money. I’ve already had a private investigator do a little digging. I’m going to have him do a little more.”

  “Can I afford that?”

  “No. But he won’t go crazy. I just want to learn a bit about the family and about Alex. See what sorts of interests he might have had.”

  “Business interests?”

  “Yes. It might be helpful to discover precisely what was in the fund. But I was thinking personal interests, too.”

  “Can you tell me more?” Cassie asked.

  “No, but only because there isn’t anything more to tell at this point.”

  “What about Miranda?”

  “What about her?”

  “Did you find out anything more about her?”

  “Like does she really work with Alex or does she or her family really have money in this magical fund?” asked Ani.

  “Yes.”

  “Unisphere Asset Management has easily six or seven hundred employees in New York, Washington, Moscow, and Dubai. None of them are named Miranda.”

  “You checked?”

  “My investigator did, yes.”

  “Can he find out if she’s an investor?”

  “Maybe. But I’m not confident.”

  “Is it possible she made up the name?”

  “If she killed him? Absolutely,” said Ani, her tone decisive. Then: “You should call back Frank Hammond. Then call me back. Let’s plan on meeting tomorrow, regardless of whether he wants to see you again.”

  Tomorrow was Friday. She had something on Friday. Maybe. She flipped through the calendar in her mind, trying to recall what it was. Then it came to her: Rosemary. Her nephew and niece. She needed to call Rosemary back because her sister and her family were coming to New York. Her sister had said something about the zoo on Saturday, so she guessed she wasn’t going to see them tomorrow.

  “Sure,” she told Ani. “What time?”

  “Come by my office around twelve fifteen. There’s a really good falafel cart around the corner on Fifty-Third Street, and it’s supposed to be a beautiful day. Do you like falafel? We could eat al fresco.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, not really answering the question.

  “Okay. But call me after you talk to the FBI.”

  * * *

  « «

  “The air marshal on the flight said you and Sokolov were talking a lot. He noticed,” Frank Hammond was saying on the phone.

  “I don’t remember,” Cassie said, as she opened her suitcase and started unpacking. A part of her knew that she shouldn’t be multitasking: all her attention should be on the FBI agent. But the unpacking was calming her.

  “And the other crew members said he was your guy.”

 
“My guy?”

  “Your section.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “And you two had a lot of interaction.”

  “I doubt I had any more ‘interaction’ with him than I did with any other passengers I was serving,” she said. It was a lie, but interaction struck her as a vague, ridiculous word that was impossible to quantify. She wondered whether the flight crew was volunteering her name so enthusiastically or whether it was only the air marshal. She guessed it was also possible that Hammond had phrased his sentence this way because he was bluffing: he was trying to frighten her into believing that he knew more than he did.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “You chatted. A lot. It wasn’t just about the wine list.”

  “I was polite. He was polite.”

  “You were flirting. He was flirting.”

  “Maybe he flirted with me a little,” she said. “But passengers flirt. They’re bored. They flirt with all of us when it’s a long flight.”

  “Got it. Anyway, that’s why I’d like you to come in and chat. I want to see if Sokolov might have said something that can help us help the authorities in Dubai. That’s all.”

  “May I bring a lawyer?” she asked. She wished instantly that she hadn’t inquired. What if he said no? But he didn’t. She dropped a dirty blouse into the hamper.

  “That’s your right,” he answered simply.

  “Okay, let me find out when my lawyer is free.”

  “But we want to see you tomorrow.”

  There wasn’t precisely an edge to his voice, but for the first time he hadn’t sounded quite so casual. Quite so laid back. It suddenly felt a lot less like this was busywork to him. And so she called back Ani and then she called back the agent, and they agreed to meet the next day at the FBI offices downtown at Broadway and Worth. She said that she’d be there at two o’clock sharp.

  * * *

  « «

  She read the obituary in the newspaper, matching the man recalled in the story with the one who had made love to her in Dubai:

  CHARLOTTESVILLE, Alexander Peter Sokolov, 32, died July 27, 2018, while traveling for business in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. He was born March 15, 1986, in Alexandria, Virginia. Alex, as he liked to be called, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia, double majoring in mathematics and foreign affairs, and then earned a Master of Quantitative Management at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He helped run the Stalwarts Fund for Unisphere Asset Management out of their Manhattan office. He loved his job because he loved data, but he also loved the fact that his work took him often to Russia, the Middle East, and the Far East. He was fearless, whether he was playing his beloved squash or exploring the world. But he was also a kind and generous friend and son. He loved movies and books, especially Russian literature, but most of all he loved anything surprising and new. He leaves behind a grieving father and mother, Gregory and Harper, as well as an extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins who will miss him dearly.

  The funeral was the day after tomorrow, Saturday, at a Presbyterian church in Charlottesville. She imagined it crowded with Alex’s classmates from the University of Virginia, his childhood friends, and at least some of the employees he worked with at Unisphere. A part of her wanted to go, but she knew that she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  The obituary was short and actually revealed very little. In the end, that didn’t surprise her, either.

  * * *

  « «

  She stared at the text from Buckley the actor. He said he had an audition on Friday for a pilot that was going to film in New York in the autumn, and had to get a haircut first thing in the morning. He wanted to know what country she was in, but hoped wherever she was, she was dancing barefoot. She recalled how her tale of the dead passenger in the coach bathroom had made him smile. She hadn’t answered his last text, but she decided to answer this one. She told him that she had just flown in from Rome, her feet were killing her, and the last thing she did before strapping in before landing was empty an airsickness bag full of some little boy’s pee into the lavatory. She added that the bag wasn’t full, because a lot of the urine had wound up on the passengers in the row ahead of the child, and he should take a moment and read the venom about the flight and the airline on Twitter. The hashtag, which already had a life of its own, was #WorstFlightThatDidntCrash. (It was actually a rather high bar, she thought, when she saw the hashtag gaining momentum.)

  He suggested a late lunch the next day, after his audition, and she wondered what he would have thought if she had texted back that she was seeing her lawyer and then the FBI right about that time. She thought of the way they had parted the previous Sunday morning and sighed. She knew that most men desired her because she was attractive and she was smart, but also because she was a drunk and she was easy. This one? She hoped for his sake he wasn’t as different as he seemed, because she always disappointed those men quickly or broke their hearts over time.

  She texted back that she was busy during the day tomorrow and going to the zoo on Saturday with her nephew and niece. She thought it made her seem wholesome—certainly more wholesome than she was. She suggested dinner tomorrow night and he agreed.

  She couldn’t imagine what condition she’d be in after a second interview with the FBI and the print edition of the New York Post hitting the stands. She wondered if he would see the image and recognize her.

  At some point she’d kicked off her shoes and pulled off her pantyhose, but she honestly couldn’t remember when. She had taken the bookend with Romulus and Remus from her suitcase and placed it on the glass coffee table. She couldn’t recall doing that either. It must have been when she was on the phone with the FBI. She stretched her toes; her feet really were killing her. She never had gotten that manicure, and now she needed a pedicure, too. That’s what she’d do this August evening. That would be her exciting Thursday night. She’d call neither Paula with her love for Drambuie nor Gillian with her willingness to pick up the pieces of the messes she left behind. (Momentarily she was struck by the ironically sobering revelation that all of her friends always expected the worst from her. But surrounded as she was by far more troubling and immediate realities, the insight passed.) She’d call no one. She’d steer clear of the bars and be level-headed and crisp tomorrow morning when she picked up the New York Post, when she met with Ani and Frank, and when—once more—she had to face the ghost of poor Alex Sokolov.

  * * *

  « «

  It was after five on a Thursday afternoon in the summer, but she reminded herself that people were still working. There might be people in the office.

  And so that part of her that even sober cavalierly hopscotched across lines most adults had the common sense to respect led her now to the soaring atrium of an office building on the Avenue of the Americas. Here was where Unisphere housed its Manhattan employees and where, once upon a time, Alex Sokolov had worked. The idea had come to her when she had been stripping off her uniform, planning to change into a casual summer slip of a dress for a mani-pedi and then a quiet evening at home. Instead she put on a blouse and skirt and pantyhose, and took a cab to the building on Forty-Ninth Street. She simply had to know more than she was learning on the web, especially with another face-to-face meeting with the FBI tomorrow afternoon.

  She told one of the two uniformed men behind the chest-high marble counter that she had a five-thirty appointment with Alex Sokolov, showed them her driver’s license, and signed in. But when they asked her to write her name in the book, she scribbled something that looked more like Alessandra than Cassandra and a last name that was indecipherable.

  As she expected, after a few minutes a slim, statuesque woman in a black blazer emerged from the elevator bank. She had gray eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, and introduced herself as Jean Miller from Human Resources. “And your name is Cassandra?” she continued.


  “Alessandra,” Cassie answered. She shrugged. “They sound the same.”

  “Alessandra…what?”

  “Ricci. Alessandra Ricci.”

  The executive motioned toward a marble bench far from the elevators and led Cassie there. “Let’s sit down.”

  “Is everything all right?” Cassie asked. “I thought at first you were Alex’s assistant and were going to escort me upstairs. But you said you’re with personnel. Has something happened?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Something has. I’m so sorry you haven’t heard and I’m so sorry I’m the one who has to tell you.” She took a breath. Then: “Alex was killed last week in Dubai.”

  Cassie wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at Jean, hoping that she wasn’t overacting. “My God. Killed? How?”

  “Someone stabbed him. Or, I guess, cut his throat. In his hotel room.”

  “That’s horrible. Just awful,” she murmured, looking down at her shoes and shaking her head. “Why? Have they caught the person? Or the people?”

  “No, they haven’t. And we don’t know why. The motive was probably robbery.”

  “In Dubai? That city’s supposed to be so safe.”

  “I guess things can happen anywhere,” said Jean.

  “He was such a sweet guy. Did you know him well?”

  “I knew him better than I did some of the other managers.”

  “How come?”

  “He was from Virginia. I’m from North Carolina. Not a lot of southerners in this office. So even though our paths weren’t likely to cross all that often for work, we sometimes had coffee. Sometimes we chatted. ‘Visited,’ as we might say in the South.”