“You’re looking … sleek and well fed, Grigori,” Janson said.
Gregori patted his generous midriff. “Inside I’m wasting away. Come, we’ll eat. Chop-chop.” He squired Janson to the dining room, with an arm around his shoulder.
Inside, waiters in morning suits beamed and bobbed their heads as the ebullient Russian appeared, ushering him immediately to a table. Though tipping was prohibited by club rules, their bright-eyed attentiveness revealed that Berman had found a way to manifest his generosity.
“Their cold poached salmon—the best in the world,” Berman said, settling into his cushioned seat. Berman said that a lot of things were the best in the world; he invariably spoke in superlatives. “But have lobster à la nage. Never fails. Also recommend roast grouse. Maybe both. You’re too thin. Like Violetta in third act La Traviata. Must build you up.”
He summoned a wine steward with a glance.
“That Puligny-Montrachet we had yesterday? Could we have bottle of that, Freddy?” He turned to Janson. “It’s the greatest. You’ll see.”
“I have to say I’m surprised to find you here, ensconced at the heart of the British establishment.”
“A rogue like me, you mean—how could they ever let me in?” Berman roared with laughter, his belly quivering through bespoke broadcloth. In a lower voice, he said, “It’s a great story, actually. You see, about two years ago, I found myself invited to house party at Lord Sherwyn’s, and ended up playing billiards with very nice gentleman I met there … .” Berman had made a habit of helping certain people out of trouble with timely loans, specializing in dissolute scions of venerable baronies. These were people who, Berman imagined, might have influence in the world. It was, in his book, sound investing.
“You’ll have to tell me about it another time,” Janson said blandly but pointedly. It was all he could do not to drum his fingers.
Berman was undeterred. “I suppose he had bit too much to drink, and he was winning big, big sums off me, and so I invited him to double up … .”
Janson nodded. The scenario was predictable. A more-than-pleasantly-buzzed British gentleman, winning outrageous sums from a seemingly sloppy-drunk Russian with seemingly infinite reserves of cash. The sozzled Russian who, all evening, had shown no sign that he knew one end of a cue stick from the other. The last game, when the British gentleman’s substantial winnings were just about to become a true fortune. The gentleman thinking, perhaps, of acquiring the apartment adjoining his in Kensington; or buying that place in the country he and his family had been renting for so long. Almost unable to believe his luck. You just never knew about these things, did you? An invitation, reluctantly accepted—the scion was disreputable, but with a family name that still opened doors—had led to a laughably easy stack of money.
And then that game, that last crucial game, when suddenly the Russian didn’t seem drunk at all and grasped the cue stick with the serene mastery of a concert violinist holding his bow. And watching dreams of free money dissolve into a reality of ruin.
“But Paul, this bloke I played with—you’ll never guess who he was. Guy Baskerton, QC.” Baskerton was a prominent lawyer, a queen’s counselor, who had chaired a commission on the arts set up by Whitehall. A rather self-important man, with a thin, David Niven mustache, and that distinctly knowing look common to the more oblivious men of his class, he would have been an irresistible target for Berman.
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Janson said, sounding more relaxed than he felt. He had to ask Berman for a big favor; it would not do to hector. It would not do to appear desperate, either, or Berman would press his advantage, converting debt to credit. “Let me guess. He’s a member of the Athenaeum admissions committee.”
“Even better. He’s club president!” Berman pronounced club like “cloob.”
“And so he finds himself into you for a hundred-thousand-pound debt of honor, which he can’t possibly make good on,” Janson said, trying to make Berman’s long story shorter. “But that’s OK, because you magnanimously insist on forgiving the debt. Now he’s so grateful, he doesn’t know what to do. Then the next day, you happen to be seated next to him at Sheekey … .” As he spoke, Janson’s eyes scanned the fellow guests and serving staff for any signs of potential menace.
“Grigori no go Sheekey. No eat fish. Only drink like fish! It was Ivy. Can you believe such coincidence!”
“Oh, I’ll bet it was a coincidence. It’s not like you bribed the maître d’ at the Ivy to make sure you were at the next banquette. Any more than you’d pressured your titled friend to make sure that the QC came to his house party in the first place.”
Berman raised his hands, touching his wrists together. “You got me, copper!” He grinned widely, because he liked his machinations to be appreciated, and Janson was someone capable of doing so.
“So, Grigori,” Janson said, trying to match his levity, “I come to you with an interesting problem. One that will, I think, intrigue you.”
The Russian looked at him, brightly expectant. “Grigori is all ears,” he said, lifting a forkful of chicken and morels to his mouth.
Janson sketched out what had happened: the sixteen million dollars that had been deposited in a Cayman Islands account without the account holder’s knowledge, yet validated by electronic signatures that should have been accessible to him alone. A clever strike. Yet could it also be a clue? Was there a chance that, in the cascade of transfer digits, someone had left digital fingerprints that might be uncovered?
As Janson spoke, Berman appeared to be wholly occupied by his food, and his occasional interjections were culinary in nature: the risotto was the world’s greatest, and the treacle tart simply the best, you try it, you see. How unfair that people were so rude about English cooking!
Yet however desultory his conversation, Janson could see Berman’s mind whirring.
Finally the moneyman put down his fork. “What Grigori know about money laundering?” he said with a look of affronted innocence. Then he grinned: “What Grigori not know about money laundering? Ha! What I know could fill British Library. You Americans think you know—nothing is what you know. Americans live in big house, but termites eat at foundations. As we say in Moscow: situation desperate, but not serious. You know how much dirty money moves in and out of America every year? Maybe three hundred billion. Bigger than GDP of most countries. Bank wire transactions, yes? And how you find this? Know how much moves in and out of American banks every day?”
“I expect you’ll tell me.”
“Two trillion dollars. Pretty soon you’re talking real money!” Berman slapped the table in merriment. “All bank wire transaction. Where you hide grain of sand so nobody find? On beach. Ten years ago, you round up my old friends. Coldhearted nyekulturniy, every one, I shed no tear, but what did you really stop? Grigori Berman founded more companies than American entrepreneur Jim Clark!”
“Phony companies, Grigori. You invented companies that existed only on paper.”
“Nowadays, these people move beyond that. Buy real companies. Insurance companies in Austria, banks in Russia, trucking companies in Chile. Cash goes in, cash comes out, who can say where and when? Who stops them? Your government? Your Treasury Department? Treasury Department has Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. In strip mall in Virginia suburb.” Once again, Berman’s bountiful stomach began to quiver. “They call it Toilet Seat Building. Who takes FinCEN seriously? You remember story of Sun Ming? Comes to America, says he’s woodworker. Borrows hundred and sixty million dollars from Bank of China. Easy as sneezing! Print up handful of import contracts, agency approvals, bills of lading, export certificates, and presto-chango, import application authorized, so. Wire transfer authorized, so. Deposits his money in banks. Tells one banker, ‘I play Hong Kong stock market. ’ Tells another banker, ‘I sell cigarette filter.’ Tells third banker, ‘Textiles!’ Zip, zip, zip. From China to America to Australia. Blending is everything. You blend into the ordinary commercial flux, so. So, gra
in of sand on beach. Americans never catch him. FinCEN charged with watching money, but nobody give FinCEN any money! Treasury secretary doesn’t want to destabilize banking system! In your country, four hundred thousand wire transfers every day, in and out. Digital message from one bank computer to another. Americans never catch Sun Ming. Australians catch him.”
“A smaller beach?”
“Better computers. Look for pattern within pattern. See something funny. So bag is out of cat.”
“Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?”
“There is difference?” Berman asked, his mouth closing around a spoon full of treacle tart. He gave a moan of gastronomic pleasure. “You know, last week I was in Canary Wharf Tower. Have you been? Fifty stories high. Tallest building in London. Practically bankrupted the Reichman brothers, but never mind, not Grigori’s money. So I’m there, visiting Russian friend, Ludmilla, you’d like her, the pair of onion domes on this woman, they put Saint Basil’s to shame. And we’re forty-some floors up and I’m looking out window, bee-yoo-tiful view of this city, and suddenly guess what I see floating through air.”
“A bank note?”
“Butterfly.” Berman said it with grand finality. “Why butterfly? What butterfly doing forty stories high, middle of city? Most amazing thing, ever. No flowers forty stories high. Nothing for butterfly to do, up here in sky. All the same: butterfly.” He raised a finger for emphasis.
“Thank you, Grigori. I knew I could count on you to make everything clear.”
“Must always look for butterfly. In the middle of nothing, thing that does not belong. In cascade of digital transfer codes, you ask: is there butterfly? Yes. Always butterfly. Flap, flap, flap. So. You must know how to look.”
“I see,” Janson replied. “And will you help me look?”
Berman looked, downcast, at the ruins of his treacle tart and then brightened. “Join me for game snooker? I know place nearby.”
“Nyet.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?”
“Because you cheat.”
The Russian shrugged cheerily. “Makes for more interesting game, Grigori thinks. Snooker is game of skill. Cheating demands skill. Why is cheating cheating ?” The logic was quintessential Berman. At Janson’s withering gaze, the Russian held up his hands. “All right, all right. I bring you to my ’umble home, da? Have fancy IBM machine there. RS/6000 SP supercomputer. And we look for butterfly.”
“We find butterfly,” Janson said, gently but unmistakably applying pressure. Berman was living the high life in London, having amassed with his wits a fortune well beyond that of the criminal associates he began with. But none of this could have happened had Janson allowed him to be prosecuted all those years ago. He didn’t have to tap the ledger; Berman knew precisely what the ledger contained. No one had a more finely calibrated sense of debt and credit than the ebullient ex-accountant.
Fort Meade, Maryland
Sanford Hildreth was running late, but when wasn’t he? Danny Callahan had been his driver for the past three years, and the only thing that would have surprised him was if he had been on time.
Callahan was one of a small pool of men assigned to chauffeur the topmost intelligence officers of the United States. Each was subject to regular security checks, of the most stringent nature. Each was unmarried and childless, and had advanced training in combat as well as executive safety and diversionary tactics. The instructions were emphatic and explicit: Guard your passenger with your life. Their passengers were men who carried the nation’s secrets in their heads, men upon whom profound matters of state depended.
The black stretch limousines in which these passengers were driven were armored; the side flanks reinforced with steel plates, the darkened glass capable of withstanding a .45-caliber bullet at point-blank range. The tires were designed to be reinflating and resealing, with a cellular design that prevented rapid leakage. But the capabilities of the driver, not the car, were paramount in ensuring the passengers’ safety.
Callahan was one of three men who were usually assigned to the deputy director of the National Security Agency, but Sanford “Sandy” Hildreth made no secret of the fact that he preferred Danny Callahan. Danny knew shortcuts; Danny knew when it was safe to push the speed limit a little; Danny could get him home from Fort Meade ten or fifteen minutes faster than the others. And the fact that he had won combat honors in the Gulf War was probably a recommendation to Hildreth as well. Hildreth had never seen fighting, but he liked men who had. They didn’t talk much, he and Hildreth: usually the motorized partition—an opaque and soundproofed barrier—remained up. But once, a year ago, Hildreth was bored, or in search of distraction, and drew Danny out a little bit. Danny told him about playing football in high school, his team reaching the state championship in Indiana, and he could tell that Hildreth liked that, too. “A running back, huh? You still look like one,” Hildreth had said. “Sometime you’ll have to tell me what you do to stay in shape.”
Hildreth was a small man, but he preferred being surrounded by large men. Maybe he enjoyed the feeling that he, the small man, commanded the large men; that they were his myrmidons. Or maybe they just made him comfortable.
Danny Callahan glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Hildreth had said he’d be ready to leave by six-thirty. It was quarter past seven. What else was new? Hildreth often ran forty-five minutes behind. An hour wasn’t uncommon.
In his earpiece, Callahan heard the voice of the dispatcher. “Capricorn descending.” Hildreth was on his way.
Callahan drove the car directly in front of the exit on the left side of the immense glass shoe box that was the National Security Agency. A rain began to fall, just a few small drops at first. Callahan waited until Hildreth came into view, then got out and stood beside the car.
“Danny.” Hildreth nodded, the outdoor halogen lights reflecting off his high forehead. His small, pinched features gathered into a perfunctory smile.
“Dr. Hildreth,” Callahan said. He once read an article in the Washington Post about Hildreth that mentioned he had a doctorate in international relations. Thereafter, he started calling him “doctor,” and he somehow got the sense that Hildreth was pleased by the honorific. Now Callahan held the rear door open for him and then shut it with an efficient thunk.
Before long, the rain started to come down harder, in sheets that twisted with the wind and made the headlights of other cars look oddly distorted. Mason Falls was thirty miles away, but Callahan could practically do the trip blindfolded: off Savage Road, down 295, a quick jaunt on 395, across the Potomac, and up Arlington Boulevard.
Fifteen minutes later, he saw the flashing red lights of a police squad car in his rearview mirror. For a moment, Callahan expected the cop to pass him, but it seemed that the cruiser was trying to pull him over.
It couldn’t be. And yet—as best as he could see in the rainstorm—he was the only car around. What the hell?
Sure, he was ten miles over the speed limit, but you’d expect the traffic cops to notice the government license plates and fall back. Some newbie with an attitude? Callahan would take pleasure in putting him in his place. But Hildreth was unpredictable: he might get angry with him, blame him for speeding, even though Hildreth had always made it clear that he was grateful that Danny got him home so quickly—appreciated his “celerity.” That was the word Hildreth once used; Callahan looked it up when he got home. Nobody liked to be stopped by the police, though. Maybe Hildreth would make sure the blame was clearly the driver’s, and have a black mark put on his fitness report.
Callahan pulled over to the paved shoulder. The squad car pulled over immediately behind him.
As the policeman, a blue slicker obscuring his uniform, appeared by his door, Callahan powered down his window.
“You know how fast you were going?”
Callahan displayed two laminated plastic cards. “Check ’em out, Officer,” he said. “You really don’t want to be here.”
“Oh, sorry, man. I h
ad no idea.” The officer sounded genuinely abashed, but it was funny—he couldn’t have been a rookie. He seemed to be in his forties, with a boxer’s squashed-looking nose and a thin scar that ran along his jaw.
“Take a careful look at the plates next time,” Callahan said, his tone bored, officious. “You see the prefix SXT, it means it’s high-security federal transport.”
The officer tore up a slip of paper. “I’m scratching this from my records. You too, huh?”
“It’s understood, Officer.”
“No hard feelings?” the officer said, sounding slightly panicked. He extended a hand through the window. “I respect the work you guys do.”
Callahan sighed, but reached out to shake the cop’s hand—which, oddly, extended past his hand to his wrist. He felt a sudden prick. “Shit!”
“Sorry, man,” the police officer said. “My goddamn signet ring.” But he didn’t move.
“What the fuck, man?” Callahan protested. All at once, he felt strangely weak.
The man in the blue slicker reached through the window and unlocked the door. Then he pulled on the knob.
Callahan was puzzled, even outraged. He wanted to say something … but nothing came out. He wanted to swat the man away … but when he tried to move his arm, nothing happened. And when the door opened, he found himself slumping out of it like a sack of gravel. He could not move.
“Easy, boy,” the man in the slicker said, laughing genially. He caught Callahan before he hit the ground. Now he leaned into the car, lifting Callahan up and over to the passenger seat on the right.
Callahan stared impassively, slack-jawed, as the man settled beside him in the driver’s seat.
The intercom light flashed blue, and a voice squawked through a small speaker: “Danny? What the hell’s going on?” Hildreth, on the other side of the opaque “privacy window,” was beginning to fret.
The man in the blue slicker pressed the driver-override buttons so that the rear doors were locked and could be reactivated only by him. Then he smoothly shifted into drive and made his way toward the Arlington Memorial Bridge.