A Hidden Affair: A Novel

  And then I understand why I am here. “You asked me why I came. You asked me that same question a few days ago when we first met in Monaco, too. I didn’t know how to answer you, but I do now: I’m here for closure. I came to say good-bye.”

  “Good,” she says, but her voice is flat. There is little satisfaction in having me decide not to pursue Jared. His choice is the vindication, the one that matters. I want to tell her that he would never become involved with me while married to her. But my presuming to tell her about her own husband would be more offensive than reassuring.

  “And the man you’re traveling with?”

  I did not realize she had seen Ari. “Was traveling with. We aren’t together anymore.”

  “Aaron.” I stare at her, surprised. How does she know his name? “He is searching for me, no?” I nod. “Aaron is Mosaad, you know.” She delivers the pronouncement matter-of-factly.

  “I know,” I say, again glad not to be hearing news from her for the first time. But the revelation is still hard to accept.

  She brushes her hair from her face. “I hope he doesn’t think that just because we’re related . . . ”

  “Related?” I interrupt and for a second the boat seems to slide sideways beneath me.

  “Yes. Aaron Bruck is my cousin.”

  chapter FIFTEEN

  I STARE AT HER, dumbfounded. “Or maybe ‘cousin’ isn’t quite the right word,” Nicole adds. “My grandmother Leah was married to Aaron’s grandfather. She was his first wife.” I remember then Ari telling me of his grandfather’s family before the war. She continues, “My grandmother died in Belzec, but their daughter survived, was adopted by a gentile couple after the war. Of course, my grandfather had no idea; he thought his family was gone and he moved on and married again, had a son, Aaron’s father. It wasn’t until years later that my mother made the connection, and reached out to her half brother.

  “I’ve seen Aaron a handful of times over the years. He was always trying to persuade me to give up my business, do some honest work.” She laughs cynically. “As if Mosaad is honest work. You know about his wife and child, yes?” Nicole asks. I nod. “After they were killed and he came home from the army, Aaron had nothing, so he was an easy recruit for the agency and his skills made him very desirable to them. He told me a year or so ago that he was getting out, but I guess he didn’t go through with it. People like him can never really walk away.”

  I let the information Nicole has shared sink in: she and Ari are related. “Do you know why he’s looking for me?” she asks.

  “Yes. I mean no, not really. Something to do with the wine, at least I think so.” Hearing myself fumble over the words, I instantly regret not bluffing better, sounding more confident.

  “The wine.” Her mouth twists. “How much do you know about that?”

  “Not much. Only that there was a transaction you handled, some wine sold on the black market that wasn’t what it was supposed to be.”

  “You must think very little of me, a criminal married to your Jared.”

  “I didn’t say . . . ”

  “You didn’t have to. Let’s not waste time being insincere.” She gazes out across the water. “I was born and raised in Beirut during the civil war. My father was dead and my mother preoccupied with raising my brothers and sisters. So it fell to me to help support my family. The black market was huge then, people turning to it for what they needed. And there was a demand for supplying those that had money with luxury goods that couldn’t be gotten elsewhere. I worked for a man from the time I was twelve, running cigarettes and alcohol and other items for pay.

  “I knew, though, that I didn’t want to spend my life working for someone else. It’s like having a pimp, you know?” There is a harshness to her voice that I have not heard before. Has Jared seen this side of her? “So when I was sixteen, I made my way to Paris. I was able to set myself up independently there and make a lot more profit, get an apartment.

  “Of course, it wasn’t like I wanted to do this kind of work forever. I finished school, studied art history at the university. It was there that I learned of a much more profitable kind of trading: rare antiques and documents. It was a funny sort of market, more gray than black really, existing just below the surface of legitimacy. I’d procure items and sell them to contacts from some of the most prestigious antiques houses in Europe. Using my background in art history, I could identify the really special pieces, the hidden gems that were overlooked. I once handled a transaction involving a very well-known museum curator in Britain for what became a major piece in a national exhibition. No one looked too closely if the item was desirable enough or the price was right.

  “I was still at university when a friend of a friend approached me, a Bulgarian man I’d met once at a party. He told me he had a client who was interested in selling certain rare vintages of wine, ones that could not be found on the commercial market. I put him in touch with some wealthy individuals I knew from my antiques work and made a healthy commission on the sale. That was how I became involved with wine trading for the first time. I quickly saw how much money there was to be made, how great the demand. So I learned the business.” She gives a slight toss of her hair. “And I became the best at it.”

  She runs her hands down her knees. “After we settled here on the island, that same man contacted me and said he’d come into possession of a valuable case of Bordeaux, the Chateau Cerfberre 43. He was very vague about its origins, which is not unusual in my line of work, but the price he claimed it could fetch was astronomical. I was skeptical at first, but the wine appeared to be authentic, and still packed in the original wooden case. I told Jared about it and we quickly figured out that wine was so valuable not only because of its vintage but its unique historical significance—it was one of the last wines produced by the Cerfberre house.”

  Before the Cerfberre family was destroyed by the Nazis, I think, remembering the story Signora Conti had told us. Nicole continues, “Finding the right buyer for such a valuable shipment wasn’t easy, so I contacted one of my associates, Friedrich Heigler, to broker the transaction. I’d worked with him a half-dozen times before and saw no reason to distrust him. He arranged the deal with the investment fund, of which Marcos Santini is a principle investor. You know who he is, yes?” she asks, but does not wait for my response. “Without telling me, Heigler moved up the transaction date, sold them another wine that he passed off as the Cerfberre Bordeaux and hid the money in an offshore account.”

  “You had no idea?”

  “No,” she retorts, visibly annoyed. “In fact, after I found out, I went to Vienna to see Heigler to try to talk him out of it before he could disappear. His plan was to sell the real wine to someone else, and he offered me a cut of the profits to go along with the scam. But when Santini’s man showed up, things got ugly and he killed Heigler.” Her face sags. “So now Santini thinks I tricked him out of his money and murdered one of his men.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And they’re still following you.” I tell her of the yacht we saw at sea. “I think we lost them, though.”

  A look of terror crosses her face, replaced quickly by one of recrimination. “Did you ever consider that by coming to find Jared, you’ve led this danger right to him?”

  “I . . . ” I start to protest. Faltering, my anger rises. How dare she blame me for the situation she created?

  “It’s all right,” she says, raising her hand before I can continue. Her shoulders slump in resignation. “There’s no hiding from these people. They would have found me sooner or later.”

  “But you could just explain things to Santini and repay him the money he lost, or give him the real wine.” Even as I say this, the notion of dealing with the criminals makes me cringe. I recall the Albanian investigation I worked on in London, the way that the mob exploited and trafficked in women. Surely Santini would use the money to generate such other enterprises further as well.

  “It’s not that simple. I’m afraid it gets worse. You s
ee, when I was first approached about the wine, I knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime. But I didn’t have the kind of cash needed to buy it. So I contracted with Maria Ivankov for a loan.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s a French-Russian financier, based in Marseilles.” She, I repeat inwardly, remembering what Ari had told me about Lucia Santini. Is organized crime the new black?

  Nicole continues, “She fronted the money for the transaction. It happens more often than you can imagine in my line of work. Private interests will often loan money without looking too closely or asking the kind of questions a bank might, and then after the transaction is complete I repay them with healthy interest. It’s never been a problem.”

  Until now, I think. Nicole is in debt to two bosses and can’t repay both because Heigler stole the money.

  “When you saw me in Monaco, I’d just been to see Ivankov to explain what happened, ask for forbearance or at least some time. She was not, let’s say, understanding.” She looks helpless then, more girl than woman. “You have to believe that I didn’t know this would happen. I thought it was just a legitimate transaction. Jared had been begging me to get out of the business and I thought with the commission on this trade that I would finally have enough to stop working these deals. It was never supposed to be like this,” she insists again, and beneath her cold, proud voice I hear a plea for understanding. “I would never intentionally jeopardize my family.”

  That’s exactly what your line of work does, I want to say, though I do not. “The wine shipment was the deal of a lifetime,” she adds defensively. “The chance to make a profit that would enable me to quit for good.”

  Stop running, get out of the game. I want to believe that Nicole is telling the truth. But there is something in her that I recognize in myself—the game itself is the thing that keeps us going. She said as much about Ari, his inability to leave Mosaad. Could any of us really be content without the thrill of the chase?

  “So what now?” I ask. “Can you go to the authorities?”

  She shakes her head emphatically. “Not without admitting my role in the affair.” Ari had said the same thing. “No, the only thing to do is get rid of the wine, sell it for a high enough price to pay back both of them. That’s what I was doing after I left Vienna, trying to broker a deal. I’ve got a potential buyer, but they want me to produce one of the bottles so it can be authenticated.”

  “But why is Ari chasing you?” I ask. “I mean, what does he want with the wine?”

  She shrugs. “I have no idea. The last time he contacted me a few weeks ago, he was acting strange, asking specific questions about the Cerfberre wine. And then I saw him, lurking around the café instead of approaching me directly. I knew he was up to something, and that’s why I left Monaco so quickly to find Heigler.”

  “I thought . . . ”

  “That I left because of you?” She waves her hand dismissively, as if the notion of being scared off by me is inconceivable.

  “But one minute you were bringing in groceries and the next, after speaking with me, you were gone.”

  “Coincidence. I was restocking the kitchen as a courtesy to my grandmother. It really is her flat.”

  “And you’re assuming Ari’s looking for the wine as part of his job, not out of personal interest?”

  “Yes. Aaron hasn’t had any personal interests since his family was killed. He loved to sail but he doesn’t even do that anymore.” In my mind, I see Ari yesterday as we traveled to Greece by yacht. He seemed so happy on the water, as though a part of him, long buried, had been set free. “Wine was never his thing anyway,” she adds.

  I remember then our visit to the Contis, how Ari discussed the various vintages we sampled so knowledgeably. Was that a side of him that Nicole did not know, or just an act? “But what would the Israeli government want with a case of wine?”

  “I don’t know. The wine is an extraordinarily rare World War II vintage, and there’s been a lot of interest in it from historians as well as collectors. That still doesn’t explain why the government would care, though, or why they would go to such lengths. But whatever Aaron wants, it isn’t to help me sell it.” Her voice is cold now, businesslike. “I need to get rid of the wine and pay off my debts in order to keep my family safe.”

  “But Ari said—”

  “Ari,” she repeats, cutting me off, raising an eyebrow at my use of his nickname. “What is going on between you two anyway?”

  “Nothing,” I reply, too quickly. “We just met in Monaco a few days ago. We were both trying to find you. That is, I was looking for Jared through you,” I correct, fumbling. “So we agreed to work together.”

  Her skeptical expression does not change. “I know my cousin—he’s a very independent man. He wouldn’t accept help, nor would he let someone else come along, unless he had good reason.” Squirming, I look away. “And you?” she asks bluntly when her previous comments do not yield the desired response. “You have feelings for him?”

  None of your business, I want to say. But antagonizing Nicole will not serve me well now. I pause, unsure how to answer. “I don’t know,” I say finally. “I mean, I like him, or I thought I did anyway.” I watch her face as it relaxes slightly. My interest in Aaron seems to give her comfort that I am not trying to recapture Jared. “But he lied to me,” I add.

  “We all have our secrets,” she replies, and I guess that she is thinking of Jared, the things she has not told him about her work. “Where is Aaron now?”

  “I left him in Argostoli. Our boat was damaged during a storm so we had to pull in, but I don’t know if he was going to wait for it to be repaired or find another way to Zakynthos. We had a lead that we might be able to find you at an address in Zante town, a café called Nicholas.”

  “Nikolai,” she corrects.

  “That’s it. So that’s likely where he’s headed.”

  “What on earth . . . ?” Her brow furrows with concern. “No, that isn’t right. I mean, I’ve heard of that place, but I’ve never been there.”

  “Maybe his source was just misinformed.”

  Nicole raises an eyebrow. “That’s rather specific for bad information, don’t you think?”

  She’s right. Had someone fed Ari the wrong location in order to throw him off course? Or worse, is it some sort of trap? Alarmed, I pull my cell phone from the bag as well as the card Ari gave me the night we met. I dial the number on the card. It does not ring but goes right to a prerecorded message, telling me that the owner is not in range. “Damn,” I swear. “Out of service.”

  “How long ago did you leave him?” she asks.

  “Just before dawn.” I glance at my watch. “He was going to sail out again after the boat was fixed. But I had to take the ferry and then a car, which slowed me down. I think he was planning to sail directly into Zante town.”

  “You need to get to him, warn him that the information is bad,” Nicole says.

  I look at Nicole, considering. She is right, of course. “But . . . ” I peer down the beach over her shoulder, wondering how far I am from Jared. I imagine him looking up, his face breaking as he sees me approach. I have waited so many years for this. The notion of further delaying our reunion and the answers to the questions I’ve had all these years is unbearable.

  “So what are you going to do? Are you going to go after Ari and try to reach him before he gets there?” It is both a real question and at the same time a test. If I really care about Ari, I will choose to help him before going to talk to Jared.

  “If I go to help Ari, can I come back and see Jared after? I mean, will he still be here . . . ?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. This has been our home.” Home. Will I ever get used to the status quo as it now exists? She smiles faintly. “And Jared won’t leave without me.” Her face grows serious once more. “But with all that has happened . . . my first priority is our safety.”

  So saving Ari might mean losing Jared, perhaps this time to somewhere I cannot find hi
m. I don’t have to do it, I remind myself. Ari lied to me about who he was and what he was doing. I don’t owe him anything and this isn’t my fight.

  Ari’s face appears in my mind. I remember how it felt on the ship during the storm, and I thought I might have lost him for good. How he saved my life in Vienna, the pact we made to be there for each other always. And I know then that, despite everything that happened, the fact that he deceived me, I have no choice.

  “All right, I’ll go find Ari,” I say at last.

  “No,” she replies abruptly. “I will.”

  I stare at her, dumbfounded. “I don’t understand. Why would you help me?”

  “I’m not doing it for you. Aaron’s my family and I need to warn him that there might be danger. I owe him that much.”

  Then why had she asked me to go? It was a test, I realize. She wanted to see which man I would choose, whether my feelings for Ari or Jared would prevail. Apparently I passed. “I can go with you,” I offer.

  “No.” She bites her lip. “You go to my husband.”

  Surprised, I hesitate. “Really?”

  She nods. “I can find Aaron while you have the conversation you need to have with Jared.”

  “But the man in the village said the road is out.”

  “It is. Take the boat.” Nicole points down the coast past the village. “Follow the shoreline around the ridge and dock at the next inlet. Our cottage is on the bluff overlooking the sea. Can you manage it?” I nod. “Good.”

  I am flooded with disbelief. She is not only giving me permission to go to Jared, but telling me where he is and giving me the means to get there. “Why are you doing this?”

  “We all need things resolved, Jordan. Me with the wine. You with Jared. Otherwise we’ll never be able to stop running. The thought of you seeing him again terrifies me,” she adds, with surprising candor. “But I don’t think it will change anything and if it does, so be it. It would be far worse to keep living as a prisoner of my fears. So go to Jared, get your answers if you can. And then we can all move on with our lives.”