Katie rushed into Dobell’s office and told him the news. Dumbstruck—not a response she’d seen often in her editor—he said, “There’s an old saying in the news business about public figures: ‛You can get away with anything, but just don’t wake up in bed with a dead woman or a live boy.’ But how do you know Susannah’s got this story right?”
       “I don’t, but it would be very dangerous for any of the girls to talk about what happened.  I guess we’ll have to let Rush handle that.”
       Dobell shook his head and said, “I’m going to have to think this through as to where we go with the story.”
       “Understood,” said Katie, “but I think things are going to move very fast now.”
       “Well, I think you should consider trying to contact Pierce. And stay out of Florida for the time being.” 

 She went back to her desk and called David the news.
        “What do you think we should do next?” she asked.
       “I think Dobell’s right about your staying put in New York for now. Let me talk to Rush and see what he says. Maybe I can go down there and snoop around.”
       “Okay, but right now I want to get in touch with Ghislaine, see if she responds if I tell her about the murder.”
       “What about Pierce?”
       “I doubt I can get to him. I’ll make the attempt, but if Rush brings any charges against him—which could take a long time or never happen—he’ll probably hole up in South Africa or somewhere that’s not going to extradite him.”
       “You got that right,” said David. “So, maybe it’s just you and me who have to do a bit more digging. Let’s wait to hear Rush’s reaction, then go from there. I’ll call him, if you want.”
       “I think that’s better. He trusts you and you can ask all the kinds of cops’ questions I wouldn’t think of.”
       “Okay, I’ll call Rush and you call Ghislaine. Good luck with that.”
       Katie called Maxwell but only left a message about needing to speak to her about “new developments.” An hour later, Maxwell called back.
       Without a greeting, Maxwell just said “So what are these new developments, Katie?”
       Katie had planned how to tell Maxwell what she knew, not in an accusatory way, for she still believed Maxwell wanted to disassociate herself from any possible culpability in the police investigation.
       “It seems there’s been a murder in Palm Beach of a teenage girl who my source says had been frequently at Jeffrey’s parties. Possibly even lived there.”
       “You have a name?”
       “Sarah Doyle, supposedly from Texas.”
       There was a pause, then Maxwell said, “Well, I’m sorry to hear about this alleged murder, but that name means nothing to me. I’ll ask Jeffrey, but I doubt he knows anything about her. Some of these girls, you know, just come and go. The men bring them to the parties, so I have no idea who they are and don’t ask. But I’ll try to find out something about this Doyle girl, okay?”
       Katie didn’t believe a word of Maxwell’s plea of ignorance, though she doubted Maxwell would have had any participation in something so sordid—and criminal—even for her. Then Maxwell said, “Is there any suspicion about who might have committed this alleged murder?”
       “My source says that Angus Pierce might have been involved.”
       Silence again, then, to Katie’s surprise, “If anything like that did happen, it wouldn’t  shock me if Angus was involved. He and Jeffrey are very close, but I have no use for the man for personal reasons. It’s been a bone of contention between Jeffrey and me for some time.”
       “May I ask why?”
       “As I said, it’s personal reasons. Oh, nothing like he tried to rape me, nothing like that, but it’s not something I care to have bandied about in the press. Now you’ll have to forgive me, I’ve got an appointment in fifteen minutes. But I will ask Jeffery about this allegation.”
       Katie said she’d appreciate it and said she’d call if she had new information. After hanging up, she thought that Maxwell’s revealing her antipathy for Pierce had been yet another step in extracting herself from the thunderbolt that was about to hit Epstein.
       With Virginia Giuffre on her way back to Thailand, Katie thought there was no reason to contact her as yet. For the moment, while waiting for David to check in, Katie thought she’d better see what more she could find out about Angus Pierce.

Katie’s research revealed that Angus Pierce (left) had come from the legacy of those Afrikaaners who had not fared well under the Anglos. He grew up poor  in Krugersdorp, once a profitable mining town whose principal company and employer had been shut down in 1929. Pierce’s father swore his son would never go down in the mines and so Angus worked odd jobs. He actually sold newspapers on the street as a child, did well in high school and through benefactors at the Jehovah’s Witnesses Center was able to attend the prestigious Stellenbosch University, majoring in metallurgy. After fits and starts on various businesses, Pierce was able to buy a small chain of South African newspapers that he parlayed into radio and television stations powerful enough to broadcast across a significant part of the African continent.
    Known for his ruthlessness, he would take over weak papers and stations, combine them, shut some down and spread his reach to other countries, eventually to India and the Middle East, where he was said to have strong relationships with a slew of Arab princes for whom he helped build networks like Al Jazeera. Pierce was also rumored to be a close advisor to  Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been courting favor in African countries. 
    Along with Rupert Murdoch (above) and  the late Robert Maxwell (above), Pierce was considered one of the powerful media men in the world, with a fortune exceed $5 billion, and the three of them seemed always jockeying to buy each other’s properties, even simply to shut them down when competing with their own.  Which is why Time magazine featured them on its cover with the title, “The Bison of World Media”—not a moniker anyone would attach to Condé Nast’s S.I. Newhouse (left) or Hearst’s William R. Hearst III (right).
 After Maxwell’s paper the European, a London-based English-language weekly circulated throughout Europe, started to lose money, Pierce attempted to buy it out from under him, as well as the New York Daily News that Maxwell had also purchased. That same year, 1991, Maxwell drowned.
    Back at her apartment that night, Katie was trying hard to put all the pieces together. If Susannah’s report of the murder, which she said she’d heard about from girls at Epstein’s estate, and if Pierce was the one who did it, did that meant he was capable of murder or that a night of intense rough sex had  led to a girl’s death accidentally? Obviously if Pierce ever was accused, that’s what he would say, that things had just gone too far or that he had no idea how many drugs the girl might have taken.
    But then it occurred to Katie that perhaps Epstein’s “very good friend” was in fact capable of murder and that Maxwell’s hatred for him might be based on her belief that Pierce had something to do with her father’s death at sea. And if Pierce was capable of causing that murder, anyone investigating him for the crime might be in danger of being eliminated as a witness.
    Thinking along those lines, she began to think that the mystery buyer of McClure’s might actually be Pierce, who, if he got hold of the paper, could kill the story or the magazine itself, then go after Katie and David.

With Druley’s help, Katie looked up contacts for Angus Pierce, finding he had an office in New York. She dialed the number and told the woman who answered that she was calling from McClure’s magazine, but, walking a fine journalistic line, did not say that she was a reporter. She thought he might be more likely to call her back if he thought it might be about the magazine sale, if it was time he revealed himself as the one making the offer.
       The woman said she would hand over the request to Pierce’s p.r. agent, a woman named Andrea Solari.  The next morning Solari called, sounding wholly officious and very guarded.
       “May I ask Mr. Pierce what this is in reference to?”
       Katie, still fudging, said, “I think he might know the reason. It’s about my magazine.”
       Solari said she’d pass the request on but that Mr. Pierce and his son were currently on a ski vacation in Switzerland.
       Katie scrambled to think of the names of the most luxurious resorts whose clientele were of Pierce’s ilk.
       “St. Moritz? Zermatt?”
        “I’m not at liberty to say. And he’s left instructions that he is not to be contacted except for very good reason.”
        “Well,” said Katie, “perhaps you can just shoot him an e-mail and see what he says.”
        “I’ll see what I can do,” said Solari. “I wouldn’t expect any answer soon, however.”