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, grain 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 Basel’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?”
“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 passenger’s 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