“How much is Günter worth? Conservatively speaking.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Werner said.
“When his wife sued for power of attorney. How much was at stake?”
Riley thought she saw a flash of anger in Werner’s eyes. And then it was extinguished.
“Approximately ninety million dollars,” he said.
“Ninety?”
“Approximately. Most of that comes from the family holdings.”
Emerson focused on Werner’s face with what Riley could only call laserlike precision.
“You’re telling me that Günter left ninety million dollars behind and ran off with a paltry six hundred thousand?”
“I know it seems strange. But Günter’s wealth is tied to this firm, to his family, to his wife. If he wanted to make a clean break, to get off on his own, he might have felt he needed to…”
“Misappropriate?”
“There’s no telling what he was thinking. Günter had been going through what I suppose you’d call a ‘midlife crisis.’ He’d been acting strangely, disappearing for days at a time, missing work, going off on his own for long weekends.”
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,” Emerson said, “we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
Werner looked a little uncertain at that. “Yes. I think he just went off the deep end.”
“With six hundred thousand dollars? Why wouldn’t he take more?”
“Maybe it was all he could get his hands on, on short notice.”
“But why the short notice? If he ran off, he could do that at any time, on his own schedule. Was something pressuring him?”
Werner laid his hands, palms up, on the table. “We just don’t know.”
Riley tried to restrain herself, but the question just couldn’t be held in. “Have you gone to the police?”
Werner looked at her. “You’re familiar with my family?”
“Of course,” Riley said. “Siblings who occupy the highest seats of power in America. You and your brothers are called the Three Musketeers of Twenty-First-Century America.”
Werner nodded. “Problem is, there are four of us.”
Riley knew the story. The Grunwald brothers had grown up in Washington, the sons of the legendary Bertram Grunwald, the Harvard professor who went on to become chairman of the Federal Reserve and who raised his sons to excel at all costs. Professor Grunwald died seven years ago, having succeeded in pushing his boys beyond his or their wildest dreams.
Werner graduated at the top of his class at Princeton and went on to conquer Wall Street. Scaling up the corporate ladder of the stodgy old banking concern of Blane Brothers, he had transformed it into one of the most powerful investment firms in the world. Before he’d reached fifty, he had added his name to it and made it his own personal fiefdom.
More impressively, there was Hans, who had gone to West Point. He had distinguished himself in the field and became commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Two years after he achieved the rank of four-star general, he’d been picked to run the National Security Agency. This was one of the few appointments made by the current administration that had sailed through Congress without a murmur of protest.
As if running the NSA and one of the world’s major banks wasn’t enough for the Grunwald family, there was Manfred Grunwald, the judge. Manny graduated with honors from Yale Law School. He served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist before starting his own law firm. Now Manny was about to be sworn in as associate justice of the Supreme Court.
The Grunwalds had conquered America.
Except for the youngest brother, Günter.
Günter hadn’t gone to Yale or Princeton or West Point. Günter had gone to Northwestern. He went on to be a successful trader on Wall Street and had been hired by his brother to work at Blane-Grunwald, where he had made millions as head of the Investment Management Division.
Millions, not billions. Head of a division, not head of an empire. A success, not a legend. When Riley googled Günter Grunwald, all she got was infor