The Expats: A Novel

by Chris Pavone

  “Then I had to spend a hundred hours cracking the algorithm of his dynamic-password system so I could log into his bank account without his knowledge. Pure drudgery. Another few weeks to build a fake web site for his bank.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when people are transferring millions of dollars, they don’t simply hit the Send button on their computer. They’re also on the phone with a bank officer, confirming the transaction. The customer creates the transaction detail, then the bank officer executes the transfer. This is how banks prevent fraud.”

  “So how did a fake web site get around this security?”

  “Because when the Colonel thought he was logging onto the bank web site, he was actually accessing a piece of software on his hard drive, not on the web. The strokes that he typed on his keyboard, the images he saw on his screen, had only a fictional relationship to the live activity of his account. The actual activity was being directed by me, remotely.”

  “So you’re saying he thought he was online, transferring money. And he was on the phone, confirming a transfer. But you yourself were executing a different transfer.”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s brilliant.”

  DEXTER RETURNED TO the balcony, wearing his ski cap. He handed Kate hers, and she pulled it low over her ears, burning and tender from the cold. They resettled under wool throws.

  “The Colonel was always putting together a big arms deal of some sort,” Dexter said. “But the one I was tracking was extra-large, with comically bad Africans as the buyers. This would be my ideal opportunity, exactly the type of complicated transaction I’d hoped for. The Colonel was buying a fleet of MiGs from an ex–Soviet general, then selling the planes to a Congolese revolutionary faction. You know about the war in the Congo?”

  Third-world carnage had once been Kate’s métier; she was glad to be rid of it. But that didn’t mean she’d gone clean. She would always be a political junkie. “Deadliest conflict since World War II,” she said. “More than five million dead.”

  “That’s right. So this deal of the Colonel’s required trust from the general, Ivan Velten, which the Colonel had earned over a couple decades of partnerships. And it required that a few transfers happen nearly simultaneously, on the same day that the MiGs were delivered. Which happened to be Thanksgiving Day.”

  Kate nodded, acknowledging this explanation of Dexter’s failure to be home.

  “The morning of the transaction, the Congolese delivered their down payment to the Colonel, who transferred half of it to Velten. So half the jets were delivered to an airfield near the Angola border, flown at night from Zambia, where the General had been stashing the planes since he pilfered them from an airbase in Kazakhstan. At that point the Colonel was obligated to pay the General the next installment. He initiated the transfer, and the funds left his account. But the money never arrived to the General’s account.”

  “Because you’d transferred it to yours.”

  “Yes. The Colonel now owed the General twenty-five million he didn’t have, and he tried to figure out what had gone on. He called his banker, but she had records of their conversation, which included his approvals and confirmations for the same-bank transfer. Both the Colonel and Velten had their accounts at SwissGeneral. Transfers within the same bank are effective immediately, because the bank can verify the funds. I too had an account at SwissGeneral.”

  “So couldn’t the bank trace the record of your transaction? Couldn’t they find the account, in their own system?”

  “Yes, they could’ve. I’m sure they did. What they found was an empty account opened by some guy I’d paid to open one a year ago, who never knew my name or saw my face. I’d immediately emptied this SwissGeneral account to an outside account.”

  “But couldn’t they trace that transaction, too?”

  “Yes, in the normal course of affairs, they could’ve. But they had a security breach that day, at their headquarters in Zurich. Much earlier—months earlier—I’d opened a safe-deposit box at this branch. The morning of the Colonel’s transaction, I went to visit my box. I was taken to a conference room for viewing. From my box I removed a small wireless-access-point device—it looked like a computer’s power cord—that I plugged into the router under the conference table, and left. The router accessed the bank’s mainframe, and the device boosted a wireless signal, so I could access it from outside the building.”

  “Why didn’t you access the system from within the conference room?”

  “Because if I used the hard connection, the administrator could’ve run a trap-and-trace, and found out exactly where I was. Plus I didn’t want to connect inside because I assumed their security would lock down the building when they discovered the breach.”

  “Did they?”

  “Yes. But I had already returned to my hotel next door. My room faced the street. I positioned a directional antenna to capture the WAP signal.”

  “How did you know this would work, technologically?”

  “I’d tried it before, on a previous trip. I’d tested the tech aspects, and also captured the passwords to the bank’s firewall. I’d been able to analyze the architecture and logic to the system, the protocols and safeguards used by their administrators. I wasn’t able to do anything yet, but I knew what I would be able to do, when the time came.”

  “Which was what?”

  “After I’d redirected the Colonel’s transaction, then transferred the funds out of SwissGeneral to an account in Andorra, it took me a couple minutes to get into the part of the bank’s system that recorded the routing and account numbers of the day’s transactions.”

  “You wiped out those records?”

  “That’s right. And it was at that point when the system administrator noticed my intrusion, and shut down the system, locked down the building. By that point, I’d transferred the money to dozens of accounts all over the planet, every transaction a different sum. Then from all those accounts, back to one account. In Luxembourg.”

  “WHAT DID YOU do at the office? Working all those late nights, weekends … what was keeping you so busy?”

  “There was a lot of systems analysis, of the Colonel’s computer, and of course of SwissGeneral. Intrusion is time-consuming. It’s a soul-crushing amount of legwork behind a tremendous amount of theory.”

  “But why did you have to do this late at night?”

  “Most of the nights was something else: I was monitoring the Colonel’s communications—e-mails and phone calls—to stay on top of his deals. Often, I had to stick around to learn the outcome of an I’ll-call-you-back-in-a-few-hours conversation. Waiting.”

  “Just waiting?”

  “Yes. But I used this downtime to accomplish other things. A hobby, sort of: researching a very confusing category of securities.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured that if the securities were created in such a complex fashion as to make it impossible for the layperson to understand, then the bankers must’ve been hiding something incredibly lucrative. And the circular logic of these arrangements—which I’m pretty sure were constructed purposefully to obfuscate—appealed to the engineer in me. In any case, it’s another form of stock-market gambling. In the past couple months we’ve earned a quarter-million euros from these investments. It’s how I make my living now.”

  “I thought you make your living as a thief.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s what I do for fun.”

  KATE SET DOWN the two mugs, the coffee’s steam streaming in thick white clots into the frigid predawn air. She took her seat, re-bundled herself under the gray cabled blanket. “How do you get caught?”

  Kate was still wrapping her mind around the logistics of Dexter’s scheme. Pushing away the more abstruse subjects—morality, honesty, matrimony, criminality—to focus on practicality, for tonight. For now.

  “I can’t.”

  “No? It’s not possible?”

  “No.”

  Kate was surprised—she
was impressed—with her husband’s outrageous confidence. Where did that come from? “What if the FBI finds the money?”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’s no way they can trace every transaction, through every account. Through commercial banks and private banks, in open banking countries and tax havens, through the secrecy of Andorra and Switzerland and the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands and of course Luxembourg. Also, Kate, these accounts no longer exist; the trails of their transactions have been erased. There’s no way this can be traced to me.”

  “None?”

  “Absolutely none.”

  “But what if they simply find the money? Like I did? How do you explain possessing all that money?”

  “I don’t have to. That’s why the money is here, in Luxembourg. In banking secrecy.”

  “That’s why we’re here?”

  “Basically.”

  “Speaking of which: can we go home? To America?”

  “Sure.”

  “But …?”

  “But we shouldn’t keep any substantial amount of money in any American bank, and we shouldn’t transfer more than ten grand from any account to any other. We shouldn’t buy any property in the U.S. We shouldn’t spend any appreciable amount of money there. We also shouldn’t earn any income there, so we shouldn’t sell our house in D.C.—we should just keep renting it. We shouldn’t do anything to open ourselves up to the IRS.”

  Kate understood. They needed to hide from the IRS so they could hide from the feds. “The man you stole it from, the Colonel,” she said. “Can he find you?”

  “He’s not looking for me. I framed someone. I set up a guy to look like he stole it from the Colonel. Another Serbian ex-Army thug.”

  “What happened to him? This other man?”

  “Another lowlife got what he deserved.”

  What else did she need to know? “That account, the twenty-five million? It’s such an even number. Not earning any interest.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to have to report any income on it. Even here.”

  “Correct. Because we have to report our income here, there.”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever. As long as we’re American citizens, we need to file American taxes.”

  “What do we do about that?”

  “We limit our income to what I earn through legitimate investments. But that doesn’t mean we have to limit what we spend.”

  “Does your plan include spending that stolen money? Or did you steal it solely to take something from someone you hate?”

  “My plan is we’ll spend it.”

  Kate let that settle in her mouth. She rolled it around, like red wine. “When?”

  “When it’s safe. I guess when the FBI leaves us alone.”

  This comment made sense at the time, in the overload of information from Dexter’s surprising narrative. It would be a long time before Kate noticed the flaw in the logic at the heart of this rationale: that if Dexter had been waiting for the FBI to leave them alone, he’d already known they were watching him. Before she’d told him.

  “TELL ME ABOUT the farmhouse.”

  “It’s a mailing address; a banking address. It’s out of the way. It’s unmonitorable.”

  It would serve nicely as a safe house, if the need ever arose. But Dexter thought in terms of tax addresses, not safe houses. Safe houses were Kate’s department.

  “You rented a car to go there. When you claimed you went to Brussels. Why?”

  “The deal was imminent. So I opened up a slew of new accounts, for a week, for the purpose of moving the money. The accounts’ paperwork was mailed to the farmhouse. I needed to collect it. To shred it.”

  “I see. That was about when you hid the account records in the kids’ bureau. Right?”

  He looked ashamed at this revelation. “That was after the, um, transaction. When the secrecy of the account became much more crucial.”

  Kate recalled that night clearly. “And that was when Julia’s supposed father showed up, wasn’t it? When we had dinner with him?”

  “Was it? I don’t remember that bit.”

  This seemed implausible. Impossible. Kate was thrust back into doubt, suspicion, distrust. “Really?”

  He shrugged.

  “So who do you think he was?” she asked. “Lester was his name, right?”

  “Probably their boss. Or a colleague.”

  They sat in silence, each pursuing a separate but parallel path of conjecture.

  “Why don’t you keep the account info at your office? Or at the farmhouse?”

  “I don’t want to have to go someplace,” he said. “If we ever need to flee quickly.”

  “Why would we need to flee quickly?”

  “If I’m about to get caught.”

  “But you said it’s not possible.”

  “Still. I should take precautions.”

  Kate couldn’t help thinking that the main precaution he’d been taking had been against her. And that brought her back to the security camera. She couldn’t decide how much to push. Couldn’t decide how desperately she wanted to know whether Dexter had seen the footage from his office. And hence whether he could backtrack through the myriad levels of her deceptions. She was still grasping her own secrets, tight to her chest.

  “Isn’t your office safe?” she asked, pushing a bit.

  “Very.”

  “Do you have surveillance there?” Unable to stop pushing, now that she’d started.

  His face still didn’t reveal anything. “I bought a video camera.”

  Her heart stopped.

  “But I never got around to networking it to my computer.”

  DEXTER DIDN’T KNOW.

  How much didn’t Dexter know?

  Dexter didn’t know that Kate had stolen his key ring. He didn’t know that Kate had broken into his office, riffled through his things. He didn’t know that Kate had been suspicious of him long before Bill and Julia had told her to be. He didn’t know that Kate had suspected Bill and Julia too. He didn’t know that Kate had broken into Bill’s fake office, that she’d made contact with an old Company acquaintance in Munich and new ones in Berlin and Geneva. He didn’t know that barely weeks earlier Kate had thought maybe the investigators were assassins.

  Dexter didn’t know that he had been—his whole family had been—traipsing across Europe, chasing his own tail.

  And he didn’t know that his wife was CIA.

  THERE WAS STILL no hint of dawn in the sky, but cars and trucks and buses had become more frequent. It didn’t need to be light to be day.

  “Your last trip to London, right before Christmas? Was it to pay off Marlena?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty thousand pounds.”

  “That doesn’t seem like so much.”

  “It’s not, purposefully. I paid her enough to get her to do the job, but not so much that she’d imagine she was involved in anything huge. I didn’t think more money would buy more security; I thought it’d guarantee less.”

  Kate was surprised at Dexter’s insight. “And what happened to Marlena, after your, um … what should we call it?”

  “Transaction?”

  “Okay, transaction. What happened to her?”

  “She saw the Colonel night of, but canceled the next week’s appointment. She hid, but stayed in London. In case something went wrong, and she needed to rekindle with him. She had a story ready about being attacked by a client, and being scared. I found a guy we could accuse.”

  “You thought of everything, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re finished with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she’s alive.”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “And?”

  “First of all, she doesn’t know the full extent of what happened; she’s aware of only her part of the puzzle.”

  “But still.”

  “I h
ave a stockpile of evidence against her. That she committed multiple crimes.”

  “She could trade testimony against you for immunity, couldn’t she?”

  “It’s a pretty long list. Some of her crimes are serious.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Yes,” Dexter said, exasperation in his voice. “You’re right. There’s a minuscule possibility that someday she might be turned against me.” He looked his wife in the eye, held her gaze. “But what am I supposed to do?”

  Kate stared back. There was something in his look that seemed to be a challenge, a dare, for her to say aloud what she would say, if she were the person she used to be.

  That person would say, Kill her. But this person wouldn’t.

  The unspoken subject hung in the air, nudging Kate with another chance, another possible segue to her own dishonest past. But this one, like all the others, turned into just another opportunity that she allowed to pass by. Instead her mind pursued a fresh offensive, turning the tables, as she always did when she should’ve been defending herself: why did Dexter keep this whole thing a secret from her?

  Then again, who was Kate, of all people, to question anyone’s motives for secrecy? She could think of good reasons—great reasons—why Dexter had kept this secret from her. She had no right to ask.

  But isn’t that what marriage is? Asking for things for which you have no right? “Why didn’t you tell me, Dexter?”

  “When?” he asked. “When would I have told you?”

  Kate had rehearsed this very same argument herself, time and again.

  “When I first thought of this ridiculous plan?” he asked. “When I hired a London hooker to seduce an old criminal so she’d be able to compromise his laptop? When we moved to Luxembourg so I could hijack an African arms deal? You’d’ve left me.”

  She shook her head: no, this wasn’t true. Or was it? Kate had never imagined that Dexter might know everything about her. But tonight, for the first time, she had doubts. Because Dexter was much more clever, much more deceptive, and much more devious that she’d thought possible. She’d been wrong about him, all these years. How wrong?