The minutes dragged by for the passenger in seat 32C as Delta Airlines Flight 82 from New York rolled to a stop at Côte d'Azur International Airport in Nice, France.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Heidi Maher was told that her 41-year-old husband, registered nurse Ted Maher, lay wounded in Monaco's Princess Grace Hospital. The news that his billionaire patient, banker Edmond Safra, and another nurse died in a fire that raced through Safra's 20-room penthouse, was the top story on that Friday morning in December 1999.

Ted and Heidi Maher in happier times

At the airport, anxious to get to the hospital to see her husband, Maher and her brother Todd Wustrau stepped into a limousine dispatched by Safra's staff. The limo raced through the tunnel connecting France with the tiny principality bordering the Mediterranean.

But Heidi Maher never made it to the hospital that day.

Instead, she says in an affidavit filed April 13 in a court near her Upstate New York home, a member of Safra's staff diverted the limo to the Hotel Balmoral, and then on to Monaco's police headquarters. There, she said, police interrogated her for 90 minutes, telling her that they found a knife with a 6-inch blade in her husband's pocket. They also said they suspected that he inflicted stab wounds to his abdomen and stomach, injuries Ted Maher still insists were made by two masked intruders he confronted inside his employer's palatial abode.

What Heidi Maher says happened next is the stuff of James Bond movies.

"My brother and I were then instructed by the police to wait outside while Safra nurse Sonia Casiano, who spoke French, ... sought permission for me to visit my husband," she said in the sworn affidavit. "While we were waiting for Sonia to emerge from the interrogation room, out of nowhere, two men and a woman dressed in black jumpsuits bearing no identifying markings grabbed me and my brother and forced us into a car ... We were being kidnapped and I thought [we] were going to die."

According to the affidavit, the unidentified trio drove Maher and Wustrau back to the hotel, rifled through her belongings and confiscated her passport. Heidi Maher claims police used the passport to coerce Ted Maher into confessing that he started the fire that killed Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente, and inflicted stab wounds on himself in order to look like a hero in the eyes of his rich and powerful boss.

"I learned later that Ted had been shown my passport ... and told that I had been strip searched and tortured. At the time this all happened, his legs and arms were tied to his hospital bed and he was connected to a urinary catheter," Heidi Maher wrote. "Ted neither reads nor speaks French. Nevertheless, he was handed a French confession by the Monaco police. He signed it to spare me from what he thought would be further abuse by the Monaco authorities."

Police and firefighters respond to the deadly blaze

Maher filed the lengthy affidavit in New York State Supreme Court in support of her motion for pre-action discovery. She is asking a judge to order Safra's widow, Lily Safra, and other members of the Safra organization to be deposed by Maher's lawyers in anticipation of a civil lawsuit alleging negligence and breach of duty.

Lily Safra was entering Swifty's, the trendy Manhattan restaurant of the rich and famous, when she was served a subpoena in April by private investigator Jay Salpeter, a retired New York City homicide detective.

"I got there a little early and ate dinner. I didn't want to serve her in the restaurant so I decided to wait outside," said Salpeter, who was described as "burly" by the New York gossip columnist who first reported the incident. "I had her photo but it wasn't difficult to pick her out. This limo pulls up and she gets out with a friend. She was dressed to kill."

Salpeter approached cautiously.

"Lily?" he asked, handing Safra the documents before she could respond. "Her friend said, 'Don't take it! Don't take it!' She dropped the subpoena and I said, 'You've been served.' She was surprised."

On the advice of her attorney, former U.S. Justice Department senior trial lawyer Mark Kurzmann, Heidi Maher declined to comment on her discovery motion or affidavit. Stanley Arkin, Lily Safra's lawyer, also declined comment.

"I'm happy to let my papers do the talking," Arkin told Court TV.

Edmond Safra

Arkin and the Safras go way back. Edmond Safra hired Arkin to investigate his belief that there was a conspiracy to defame his business and personal reputation in Europe and South America, where he and his family started banks. Working quietly, Arkin's probe led to the 1989 revelation that American Express officials engaged in a secret campaign to ruin Safra's reputation by spreading rumors about illegal activities. The company apologized publicly and paid $8 million to charities selected by Safra.

In going up against Arkin, Kurzmann and Michael Griffith, another prominent lawyer on the case, have taken on a formidable legal adversary with practically unlimited resources. In his lengthy response to Heidi Maher's motion for pre-action discovery, Arkin, joined by lawyers for other members of the Safra organization, contends that the motion for pre-action discovery — a rarely used legal maneuver — is really intended to get information that Ted Maher could use in his defense of the criminal charges.

If convicted of the charge of "arson causing death," Ted Maher faces life in prison. The criminal trial in Monaco could begin as early as September.

"It is plain that Mrs. Maher has brought this Application for pre-action discovery in her ongoing efforts to discredit law enforcement authorities in Monaco and to obtain discovery for use in Monaco proceedings, which otherwise would be unavailable to Mr. Maher," Arkin wrote in opposition to Heidi Maher's request to depose Lily Safra and eight others. "Mrs. Maher's Application is replete with irresponsible unsubstantiated accusations and innuendo ..."

A judge sitting in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., has yet to rule on whether Heidi Maher's lawyers will get to question Lily Safra and her employees about the circumstances surrounding her ill-fated trip to Monaco.