Must be some mechanical problem, Stern thought. Better to find it now than out over the Atlantic. He just hoped the delay wasn’t too long. The dinner menu he had just surveyed included lobster. He had not had a chance to eat yet today.

Stern didn’t pay much attention as the jet eased back up to the gate. He traveled enough to know this sort of thing was routine. And besides, he was watching the rather fetching shape of the stewardess and didn’t see the cabin door behind him swing open. Or notice the big black man who led a group of four other men on board the aircraft.

Stern looked up when he sensed the man standing in the aisle over him. He flashed a badge in Stern’s face.

“Mr. Stern, I am Special Agent Decker from the FBI. If you will, please, come with us. You are under arrest.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Stern sputtered. “There must be some mistake.” He saw the beautiful stewardess, now looking at him with wide eyes, as if he was some kind of pariah. “What are the charges? I want a lawyer.”

“There is no mistake,” Decker answered. “You are charged with several counts of federal investment fraud. And the New Jersey authorities have a warrant for your arrest for the attempted murder of a Mr. Alan Smythe.”

Epilogue

The frumpy spinster took her seat at the back of the courtroom, sitting in the same chair she had occupied all week. No one paid her any attention. She was just another lonely soul, looking for someplace, some real drama to occupy her otherwise empty life. She sat quietly knitting, while the production played out up front. She appeared to working on a baby’s sweater, maybe for some newborn niece, the daughter of a prettier sister. She sometimes smiled, sometimes frowned, but otherwise, it would have been difficult to tell that she was even paying attention to the legal give-and-take going on up at the front of the room.

Not all the seats were taken. There was the usual crowd: “legal eagles,” curious onlookers, law students, a few members of the press who had been unfortunate enough to draw this duty. Dmitri Ustinov’s trial did not provide the high drama that the others had done. He was such a small cog, a technical geek caught up in a complicated mess, more along for the ride than in it for the really big score. Smythe and Stern, the big-buck guys, with their billion-dollar scheme and their ties to the Russian underworld and, in turn, to the Durov plot, had captured everyone’s imagination. Those were the trials that dominated the network newscasts and cable shows for weeks.