Dance of Death

by John Case

  And there was another problem, as well. Even if the wire transfer went through and he found a way to get the money into the States, there were people who would be looking for him. Not just the FBI and the CIA, but Hakim’s partners in the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. They’d fronted the hash, and they’d expect to be paid for it. This had been Hakim’s responsibility, but now that Hakim was missing, it was up to Wilson.

  Of course, the Lebanese didn’t know his name. But they almost certainly knew about Belov (not to mention Zero and Khalid). It wouldn’t take long for the Lebanese to find out that the deal had gone through in Bafwasende, and that Wilson’s bodyguards were killed in Bunia soon afterward. They might even learn that he’d fenced the diamonds through Big Ping. And they would no doubt suspect that he’d decided to keep both his share and theirs.

  Not that there was anything they could do about it. Not unless they found him.

  Wilson mused about each of these problems as he drove through the rolling Swiss countryside on the way to tiny Liechtenstein. At three o’clock in the afternoon, he crossed the unmanned border that separates the two countries. Immediately, the road began to climb, cutting back and forth across the mountainside, straightening out when the Alfa rolled into Vaduz, Liechtenstein’s manicured capital. He parked on the street in front of the Banque Privée de Stern, and went inside.

  The manager, Herr Eggli, had the look of a young Einstein, with a nimbus of blond hair exploding in every direction. Everything else about him was orderly and precise. His skin was as clear and smooth as a sheet of paper, colorless but for the blush of health in his cheeks. He wore a dark suit and gold-rimmed granny glasses, and spoke English with a British accent. Behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows looked out upon the snowcapped mountains that defined the Rhine Valley, even as they hulked above it.

  Wilson took the leather wing chair that was offered, crossed his legs, and explained that he wanted to arrange a wire transfer.

  “I’m afraid that facility is only available to our clients,” Herr Eggli explained.

  “I understand that,” Wilson said. “I was hoping to become one.”

  Eggli’s face dissolved in regret. “We don’t actually do much retail banking.”

  “Of course not, but, well, it’s quite a bit of money that’s involved,” Wilson said.

  Eggli gave him a curious look. “Oh? May I ask how much?”

  “About three million euros,” Wilson told him.

  The banker paused, then nodded thoughtfully. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see any obstacles, really. We can open an account straight away, if you’d like.”

  “I would.”

  “There’s very little paperwork. I’ll just need to see your passport. And then, of course, I’ll need the banking codes for the wire.”

  Wilson slid the d’Anconia passport across the polished wooden desk.

  “I’ve always thought it’s a bit like checking into a hotel,” Eggli joked. “Except, of course, the guests are money.”

  Wilson chuckled politely.

  “If you’d like, I can arrange the wire transfer this afternoon.”

  “Terrific.”

  The banker pinched a couple of forms from the top drawer of his desk, and began to fill them in, relying on Wilson’s open passport and asking a couple of questions about the Cadogan account. After a moment, he looked up with a smile. “Your English is very good.”

  Wilson smiled. “I grew up in the States.”

  “I thought as much.” The banker completed the paperwork, then handed it to his new client. “If you’ll just sign at the bottom …”

  Wilson signed d’Anconia’s name, and gave Eggli his account number and password at the Cadogan Bank.

  The banker got to his feet, and crossed the room to the door. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Wilson made a gesture, as if to suggest that he had all the time in the world. In reality, he felt as if he were about to implode. It had just occurred to him that the feds might not be as stupid as he’d supposed. If they were on to him, if they were watching the Cadogan Bank, they might very well let the wire transfer go through – after alerting the authorities in Vaduz.

  A minute later, the door swept open, and Eggli swept in. “No worries.” He resumed his seat behind the desk. “The wire should clear overnight, so the money will be available in the morning. Ten-ish, I’d guess.”

  “That’s great. You’re very efficient.”

  “We try. Even if, technically speaking, we’re not Swiss, we try. And now, is there anything else I can do?”

  “There is,” Wilson said. “If you could recommend a hotel –”

  “Of course!” Eggli exclaimed.

  “And a stock.”

  “Excuse me?” The banker seemed befuddled.

  “The bank invests its client’s monies, does it not?”

  “Absolutely,” Eggli said.

  “Well, then, I’d like you to invest mine.”

  Herr Eggli was delighted. “Yes, well, we have quite an array of instruments. Bonds, shares, mutual funds. May I ask your objective?” He sat with pen poised above a clean sheet of paper.

  “My objective,” Wilson told him, “is to walk out of here with three and a half million dollars in stock.”

  The banker chuckled nervously. When he saw that his client wasn’t laughing, he said, “You’re speaking figuratively, of course.”

  Wilson shook his head, slowly. “Not at all. I want you to buy shares in … whatever. Nestlé. Roche. I don’t care, really, as long as they’re publicly traded. When you’ve made the trades, I’d like the shares couriered, on an expedited basis, to my hotel.”

  Eggli winced through the explanation. “Typically,” he said, “we act as a repository for our clients’ shares. It’s safer that way. We’re a bank, after all. And we have a vault. If you’d like to see it –”

  “I’m sure it’s sturdy, but … can I be candid?”

  The banker looked surprised, but said, “Of course.”

  “I’m in the midst of a very unpleasant divorce –”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Wilson shrugged. “It happens. And when it does, I can promise you it’s a lot better to be liquid than not. So I’d feel more comfortable if I held the shares directly.”

  Eggli nodded understandingly, but he wasn’t buying it.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Wilson said.

  “Of course.” Eggli put the pen down, and folded his hands on the desk.

  “How much is the bank’s commission?”

  The banker blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Your commission! For executing trades. How much do you charge?”

  Eggli pursed his lips. “Three-fourths of one percent.”

  Wilson did the math. “So that’s … twenty-seven grand.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your commission on the trade will be twenty-seven thousand U.S. dollars.”

  Eggli’s expression never changed. He sat where he was, as he was. And then, with a shrug of surrender, he got to his feet and shook hands. “I think you mentioned Nestlé, Roche?”

  “Whatever,” Wilson told him. “They’re all good.”

  Standing in the Immigration Control line at JFK, passport in hand, Wilson felt tense, though he told himself there was nothing to worry about. He’d left the United States a couple of months before, using his Jack Wilson passport to enter Ireland. After that, he’d used the d’Anconia passport. Anyone looking at Wilson’s real passport would assume that he’d flown to Ireland and stayed there for the past two months.

  But there was a problem, nevertheless. When the immigration officer swiped Wilson’s passport through a magnetic reader, something popped up on her computer screen. Wilson couldn’t see what it was, but it was enough to generate a phone call.

  “If you’ll just take a seat over there …?” It wasn’t a question, really.

  Soon, a good-looking Homeland Security agent arrived on the scene. She spoke with the immigration
officer for a moment, then beckoned for Wilson to follow her to a cubicle.

  When the door closed behind them, she gestured for Wilson to sit down at a small table. Wilson read her name tag: Carolyn Amirpashaie. What kind of name is that? he wondered, unable to guess her ethnicity. “Is there a problem?”

  She leafed through his passport with a frown. Finally, she said, “I don’t know.” Looking up, she said, “Is this your real name?”

  Wilson acted as if the question took him aback. Finally, he said, “Yeah … Jack Wilson.”

  “Is that a nickname? ‘Jack’ for ‘John’?”

  Wilson shook his head. “No, it’s ‘Jack’ on my birth certificate.” He smiled. “My mother was a big fan of the Kennedys.”

  “How nice …” She leafed through the passport again, but this time much more quickly. “So, what countries did you visit, Jack?”

  “It’s on the form,” he told her. “I was in Ireland for a couple of months, and then a couple of days in Switzerland.”

  “Right.” She glanced at his Customs & Immigration form, which showed his arrival on a flight from Zurich. “And what were you doing there?”

  “Nothing, really. Saw some friends. ‘Explored my Celtic roots.’” He chuckled good-naturedly, but his hands were clammy, and the peripheral vision in his left eye was beginning to flutter.

  “In Switzerland?” she asked.

  Wilson’s laughter sounded forced, even to himself. “No,” he said. “In Ireland.”

  “But then you went to Switzerland?”

  “At the end of my trip, yeah. I was only there for two or three days.” He watched as she picked up his passport, and leafed through its empty pages a second time.

  “They didn’t stamp it,” she said.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “The Swiss.”

  “No, they just waved me through.”

  She nodded. “They’re like that,” she said. Then she cocked her head. “You don’t look Irish.”

  Wilson took a deep breath. It suddenly occurred to him that whatever this was about, it couldn’t have anything to do with Bobojon or Hakim. If it did, Homeland Security wouldn’t leave him alone with someone named Carolyn. Which meant, what? Why had they stopped him? There was no way for Wilson to know, but it might have been as simple as the fact that he’d paid cash for his ticket. Either that, or they’d integrated some of their databases, making data from the Bureau of Prisons accessible to customs and immigration officers. If so, it was no skin off his nose. He’d done his time, and he’d gone to Ireland. So what?

  Relaxing, he turned on the charm. “Actually,” he said, “I do … look Irish, I mean.” Leaning over the table, he lapsed into a playful brogue. “As a matter of fact, darlin’, you’re looking at the map of Ireland.”

  She tried not to smile. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “You’re not sayin’ you never heard of the ‘black Irish,’ are you?” Certainly, Wilson had. His college girlfriend had written a master’s thesis on the Celtic diaspora.

  The Amirpashaie woman shrugged. “Well, I’ve heard the phrase, but –”

  “You’re looking at a direct descendant of some poor castaway whose ship went down with the Spanish Armada. Some of the Spaniards washed up on the Emerald Isle. Married the local colleens. And why not? They were all Catholics. And this is the result: my smiling mug. Dark hair, dark eyes. Mediterranean skin. Y’know,” he said, “some people think the Melungeons are descendants of that same Iberian blood.”

  “The Melungeons?”

  “In Appalachia. Which is fascinating when you think about it,” Wilson said, “because they’ve done mitochondrial DNA studies and –”

  “Mr. Wilson?”

  “Yes?”

  “This sounds like a lot of blarney.”

  “Oh,” he said, faking a look of deep disappointment.

  She smiled, and handed him his passport.

  The hassle continued at Customs, but it was no big deal. An agent went through his suitcase with great deliberation, but there was nothing to find. Wilson had burned the d’Anconia passport in Zurich, and FedExed his stock certificates to Vegas, where he would pick them up in a day or two.

  Once he had the shares in hand, he’d open a bank account in Reno. Then he’d use the shares as collateral for a loan. He could probably get 80 percent of their value, which would give him about three million dollars. The bank would hold the shares, but it wouldn’t sell them – which was good, because they wouldn’t show up on anyone’s radar.

  Sitting in the Admirals Club, nursing a tumbler of Johnny Walker Black as he waited for his flight to Vegas to be called, Wilson thought about all that he’d been through, including the people he’d been through. Bobojon and Hakim, Zero and Khalid, the kid at the diamond mine. Life’s a bitch, he thought, and then they bury you.

  Twenty

  London | March 23, 2005

  RAY KOVALENKO SAT in his office in the American embassy on Grosvenor Square in a state of rapt horror, reading and rereading the CAT scan report. He’d arranged to get the scan three days after learning that his best friend, Andy, whose birthday was only two days after Kovalenko’s own, had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer. Liver, lungs, pancreas, colon. And Andy had felt fine! Jesus, your whole body could be going south and you wouldn’t even know until it was too late.

  Even as Kovalenko commiserated with Andy, he was looking up the number of his Harley Street internist. He insisted on a scan despite the doctor’s opinion that a full body scan not only subjected the patient to unnecessary radiation, but often produced ambiguous results. False positives and the like, which could lead to unnecessary procedures.

  Kovalenko’s follow-up appointment with the internist was not for a few days, but a copy of the report had arrived from the imaging center in the morning mail. He took one look at it, felt the color drain from his face to his shoes, and got on his cell phone to Harley Street.

  “I’ve got calcified granulomas in my lungs!”

  “Not to worry –”

  “Not to worry?! What about this nodularity on my liver! Is that supposed to be good?”

  “Well,” the internist said, “not ‘good,’ but –”

  “And a lesion! I’ve got a lesion on my kidney!”

  “Yes, well, it could be anything.”

  “Anything?!”

  “Or nothing. CAT scans are like that,” the internist told him. “They show everything and, most often, it doesn’t amount to much.”

  Kovalenko’s stomach tightened into a ball. And stayed that way.

  All day.

  The FBI’s Legal Attaché program consists of fifty-three offices around the world, staffed by more than a hundred and fifty special agents, one of whom was Ray Kovalenko. Each Legat (or Lee-gats, as they were called) was part of the country team within the embassy.

  Kovalenko’s most important mission was to work with the CIA and British intel agencies to “prevent, mitigate, and investigate terrorist attacks.”

  The phone buzzed. And again. Reluctantly, Kovalenko put aside the CAT scan report (mild atherosclerosis of the thoracic aorta!) and picked up the telephone.

  “Yes, Jean?” He’d asked her to hold his calls. “I hope this is important.”

  “It’s Berlin. Mr. Spagnola. He said it was urgent.”

  On top of his anxiety over the CAT scan, Kovalenko had a hangover, a nagging throb behind his eyes that the word “urgent” seemed to propel into a new pain level. And it was just a couple of glasses of red wine! He cleared his throat, pushed the button on the phone, and forced his voice into friendly mode. “Joey, heyyyy. What can I do you for?”

  “Remember the guy the BfV took down?”

  Kovalenko blinked. If he moved a certain way in his chair, he got a pain in his lower back. Probably the lesion.

  Kovalenko remembered. Sighed. Bobojon Simoni. Who could have been a gold mine. And the Germans screwed it up. “What about him?”

  “Turns out, Simoni was like a
switchboard for one of the al-Qaeda groups, posting ciphered messages on eBay,” Spagnola explained. “One of their people needs a surveillance report on the White House? A wire transfer, or a recipe for ricin? All they had to do was check out the Korans from Akmed’s Books.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not. Anyway, I got half a dozen wire transfers in front of me. One of them’s on your watch.”

  Kovalenko picked up a pen, and began to make notes. “Which one?”

  “Looks like Mr. Simoni was feeding an account at the Cadogan Bank –”

  “Cuh-dugg-in,” Kovalenko corrected.

  “What?”

  “It’s the Cuh-dugg-in Bank, not the Cad-aggin Bank. Cadogan was –”

  Spagnola cut him off. “Whatever! It’s a bank on St. Helier – and don’t tell me it’s ‘Sont El-yeh,’ ’cause I don’t really give a shit! I got enough problems – I’m being sabotaged in my own house … by my own troops. Y’know what I mean?”

  Kovalenko did not.

  Spagnola took a deep breath. “St. Helier,” he said. “That’s Jersey, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so … surprise, surprise! No name on the account,” Spagnola continued. “All we got is a number. December 20 – twenty-five grand arrives. Via Bobojon Simoni, from an account associated with an offshoot of al-Qaeda.”

  “Which one?”

  “They call themselves the Coalition of the Oppressed of the Earth.”

  “Never heard of them,” Kovalenko said.

  “Salafi jihadists,” Spagnola said. “Same old shit. They want to go back to the seventh century.”

  “They want to go back to the Stone Age, but they’re using the Internet – eBay – to distribute money?” Kovalenko shouted. “It’s an outrage. Where’s the ideological consistency?”