The Russia Account

by Stephen Coonts

  “They called my wife. Penny told me what they said.”

  “Tell me.”

  He did. Going over it took half an hour. The threat was the kid would get killed or maimed if Penny Rogers didn’t shut up and behave. If she did, the kid would come home alive and well. If she didn’t, they would start mailing her parts.

  He had finished the vodka and I thought I knew most of it when I heard a knock on the door. I went and checked with my gun in my hand. It was Joe Kitty and Armanti Hall, and they had Penny Rogers with them.

  “We were followed,” Armanti said. “We managed to ditch them.”

  Penny Rogers was a sight. She was not a large woman, never pretty, and the last few days, or perhaps the ride with Armanti and Joe as they ditched her tail, had wrung her out.

  “She didn’t say a word,” Joe Kitty said. He went outside to keep an eye on the cars.

  I nodded towards Frank and whispered to Armanti, “Take him into the bedroom and keep him quiet.”

  Penny watched them go in silence, then sat on the little couch.

  “A glass of wine, or perhaps water?” I suggested.

  She thought wine, so I poured her a glass from a bottle of red that Dulcie had corked in a cabinet, then sat down across from her.

  “Who are you men?” she asked.

  I showed her my fake passport and State ID. She scrutinized the documents, then handed them back.

  “Frank said you talked to him at school.”

  “I did. And again this afternoon, right here.”

  “Whose apartment is this?”

  “A friend’s.”

  “Why here? Why not the embassy or our place?”

  “Your apartment is bugged and I didn’t want anyone to see you entering the embassy.”

  She stared at me. “How do you know our apartment is bugged.”

  “We went in and looked.”

  “The door was locked.”

  “We picked the lock, Mrs. Rogers. Just like the men did who bugged the place.”

  She sipped at the wine, remained silent, and looked around. The cat sniffed her feet, then wandered off. It was black, with one splotch of white on its face. Oreo. Looked like a nice cat.

  “They’ll kill Audra if we talk.”

  “Not if we get to her first. And there is no way on earth for that to happen unless you tell us the truth.”

  “She doesn’t deserve this.”

  She lost control of her face. The refrigerator hummed and somewhere in the building a door slammed. I could faintly hear traffic down on the street below the windows. She wiped at her eyes, and finally her eyes dried up.

  Penny Rogers began talking. All that money flowing through that tiny little branch bank aroused her curiosity. Her employees, all Estonians who had worked there for years, told her the branch had always been profitable. More than ninety percent of the accounts were Russian, and they were always opened over the internet. The only people who came into the branch were locals. Their accounts were small and legitimate, with paychecks deposited into savings or checking accounts. But the Russians…

  Big deposits, in the tens of millions. Day in and day out. The money didn’t stay long, but was wire transferred on to America, the UK, South America, southern Europe. All over the world.

  “How much money?”

  “It varies. The deposits have averaged a billion a week during the last year.”

  “Fifty billion dollars in the past year?”

  “Yes.”

  She finished her glass of wine and put it on the little table to her right.

  “They’re laundering money,” I suggested.

  “Obviously,” Penny Rogers said, as if I needed a dozen more IQ points. “All the businesses in Russia don’t generate fifty billion dollars of profit in a year.”

  “So what did you do?”

  She began to talk. As she spoke the words poured out, faster and faster. She tried to check on the accounts where the money was being transferred. Used the internet to track down the accounts, which were all corporations. She finally realized they were all shell corporations, without assets. She wrote emails and memos to her superiors in Stockholm. She was told to remember the bank’s business was the bank’s business, and not to discuss it with anyone. Her emails became more strident. Then Audra was kidnapped.

  “And someone came to talk with you…” I suggested.

  She nodded. “At the bank. It was a man I didn’t know. He was blunt. Told me to keep my mouth shut and run the branch. If I discussed the bank’s business with anyone we would never see Audra again. In one piece. He said that. ‘In one piece.’ I told him we had already reported the kidnapping to the police. He sneered at that.”

  “Tell me about this man.”

  “In his forties, I thought. Spoke with a heavy accent. Not Swedish. Russian, perhaps. Terrible teeth, stained yellow from cigarettes.” She made a face. “A horrible man. Evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.”

  “Did he demand money, anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ask for proof that they had Audra, that she was still alive?”

  She nodded and sniffled. Dug in her purse. Produced a photo. A snapshot. It was Audra all right, against a white wall, with a welt across her face. No glasses.

  “May I keep this?”

  She said yes, so I put it in my inside jacket pocket.

  “She’s all we have,” Penny said, so softly I almost missed the comment.

  What do you say to that? I couldn’t think of anything.

  “How are you going to get her back?”

  That was an excellent question. “Who did you write to at the bank in Stockholm?”

  “I sent emails to Arne Soderman, who supervises the branches, and then finally a letter to the president, Isak Dahlberg. Three letters, actually. A scandal like this could wreck the bank.”

  “We’ll talk to them,” I said.

  I went to the bedroom door and told Armanti and Frank to come out. I said to Armanti, “You and Joe take the cars back to the embassy. Get some new wheels, rental cars. Then come back here.”

  Armanti left. The Rogers sat beside each other on the couch and held hands.

  Jake Grafton came by invitation to Sarah Houston’s office in Langley. When he was seated with the door shut, she turned a computer monitor so he could see it. “The branch bank server gave us the encryption codes. This is what we have so far from that branch. Money in, money out. Euros, dollars, pounds, yen, Swiss francs, you name it. It’ll take a few more days to get into the main servers in Stockholm.”

  As Grafton scrolled through the transactions, Sarah said, “I didn’t believe it, but the size of these transactions is awe-inspiring. It could easily go a billion dollars’ worth a week. It’s money-laundering on a massive scale. They must be washing money for Iran, North Korea, Syria, and every drug syndicate on the planet.”

  “Get all the information you can as fast as you can. I’ll have a department head meeting and get you some help. Someone at the bank knows there is a leak or Audra Rogers wouldn’t have been kidnapped. This river of money is going to stop flowing soon. We want to know where it comes from before it goes into the bank and where it goes from there. Let’s find out before the river stops flowing.”

  They discussed the logistics of the operation. “If I can get into the bank’s main computers, the sheer volume of data could take man-years to unravel,” Sarah noted. “And we are just seeing a tiny piece of the operation.”

  Grafton didn’t look up from the screen. “We need to see the entire watershed.”

  Sarah said, almost as an afterthought, “We happen to have a full plate already. I don’t think you understand how labor-intensive it will be to dig into records at other banks, assuming we can get in by hook or crook or even—God forbid—invitation. It will be like trying to sort plates of spaghetti. The whole reason washers transfer money hither and yon is to make it difficult to trace. Sometimes tracing becomes impossible.”

 
“This is priority One,” Jake Grafton shot back. “We’ll get the people and equipment you need as soon as we can. We don’t have man-years.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need your help to figure this out, Sarah.”

  After Grafton left, Sarah made a face at the door, then began drafting a memo for him to sign.

  Back in his office, Jake Grafton ignored the pile of paper in his in-basket. He looked at the paintings, at the flags, thought about the river of money. And he thought about Audra Rogers.

  He was sitting at his desk doodling on a pad when the phone rang. The receptionist. “Tommy Camellini on the secure link from Estonia.”

  “I’ll take that.”

  Two button pushes later he heard Tommy’s voice.

  After Tommy had brought the admiral up to date, he continued, “Seems to me, boss, that the first priority is Audra Rogers. Truth is, she may be dead, and the trail is what, thirteen days old now? To get to her, we’re going to have to go to Stockholm and sweat the people at the bank. One or more of them is dirty. They won’t want to talk to us and we don’t have the horsepower to put serious pressure on unless you’re willing to create an international incident with an American friend.”

  Jake Grafton took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He too thought Audra was probably dead. Why would the kidnappers keep her alive? “You need to get that branch server. Go in and get it before the bad guys do.”

  “I’ve got a guy watching the bank to make sure it doesn’t walk out the front door,” Tommy said. “We’ll snatch it ASAP.”

  “What time is it there?”

  “Ten p.m.”

  Grafton looked at the clock on the wall. Seven hours difference. “Get it tonight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grafton hung up and pushed the intercom, summoning his executive assistants.

  “I want to go to Stockholm as fast as possible,” he told them. “Get me a plane, an executive jet out of Andrews. And I need more people.” He named them. “They can come with me. Make it happen.”

  Chapter Three

  My telephone rang. It was Joe Kitty.

  “Tommy, two guys just entered the bank building. There’s a car and driver waiting out front. They might be after that server. What should I do?”

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  I tore out of the embassy, jumped into my rental car, and headed for the bank. Eight minutes later, I pulled up behind the suspect car parked in front of the bank. The engine was running. I hopped out with my shooter in my hand and walked toward the driver’s door. The driver didn’t wait to see what was going to happen next: he gunned his ride and tore off down the street.

  Joe Kitty came running over. “Now what?”

  “Watch the door in back of the building. We want the server.”

  He hotfooted it for the nearest alley. That’s what I like about Joe Kitty—no stupid questions. As if I had any answers.

  The interior of the building was dark except for a few night lights on the stairs. The guys in the building, if they were indeed in the bank’s branch office, would come out and look for their ride. And it was gone. If the driver of the getaway car was on the phone to them, Lord only knows what they would decide to do. Maybe hunker down like Bill Leitz and I did the other night.

  The door to the building was unlocked, so I went in. I eased up the stairs and checked the door to the branch office. Unlocked. Should I go in?

  Not feeling suicidal, I decided not to.

  Were they still in there? No more than a minute had passed since the getaway car made its quick departure.

  I retreated to the top of the stairs, faced the branch office door, and waited for it to open. They were coming through that door or they weren’t coming out. Two guys, Joe said.

  I stretched out on the floor with the pistol at arm’s length. The light wasn’t very good—I’d be almost invisible to them—but I could see the sights well enough to shoot. I waited.

  Wished I had a silencer on the pistol. Oh, well. Next time.

  How do you say “Stop” in Russian? Or Swedish?

  No more than sixty seconds had passed when the door opened quickly and two men came out. One of them was carrying something. They paused and looked over the transom that gave them a view of the main entrance. Looking for their ride. So the driver hadn’t called them, or they had their cell phones off.

  “Halt,” I said loudly. One of them, the guy without the server, turned my way and I saw the flash of a pistol in his hand. He shot from the hip without aiming, and I heard just a muffled pop. The bullet must have gone over my head.

  I pulled the trigger of my shooter and the report filled the hall. The guy staggered and fell.

  The other guy decided he wasn’t a hero. He froze.

  I sprang from the floor and walked toward them. The guy on the floor wasn’t moving. The man holding the server watched me come. I kept the gun on him.

  “Put it down,” I said.

  He was looking at the pistol and trying to decide. I motioned at the server. “Down slowly.”

  He got the idea. After he put the box down, I motioned back against the wall. He turned around, spread his arms, and leaned on the wall. He’d done this before. I hit him in the head with the pistol, as hard as I could. He collapsed.

  He had a gun on him too. No wallet. No phone. No passport. Nothing but the gun.

  I checked the guy I had shot. He was still alive but out of it with a hole in the chest. Blood frothing out. A lung shot. No wallet, phone, or passport, but a pack of Marlboros and some matches.

  I picked up the server and trotted down the stairs. Joe Kitty was already behind the wheel of our car and had the engine running. I climbed in, slammed the door, and he put us in motion.

  “I heard the shot.”

  “He shot first. Had a silencer.”

  “What do you think this is, Tommy, a fucking cowboy movie? Man, never give the assholes the first shot.”

  “Sarah Houston on Line Two, Admiral.” That was the receptionist.

  Jake answered it. “Grafton.”

  “The server in Tallinn is off line.”

  “Maybe Tommy got it.”

  “Someone did, or turned it off.”

  “I’m going to Sweden in a couple of hours. I’ll need a printout of everything you can give me from that server.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When Sarah was gone, Jake called Tommy on his cell. Tommy answered.

  “Unsecure line. Do you have the box?”

  “We got it.”

  “Great. Call me on a secure line.”

  “You should have marched that dude you hit into the car,” Joe Kitty said, “and sweated him to see what he knows about that kid.”

  “Then what?” I said. “Let him loose to tell his boss all about us, or should we shoot him and dump him somewhere?”

  “I keep thinking about that kid,” Joe Kitty said.

  “Yeah, I do too.”

  “If she isn’t dead she soon will be.”

  That was my thought too, and it sat like a rock. Nine years old. Probably scared out of her mind. Damn!

  I said, “Let’s go back and see if we can follow that guy when he leaves the building. He’ll go somewhere. He doesn’t have a cell phone or wallet on him.”

  “Someone will come for him,” Joe said. He made a U-turn on the wet empty street. He parked the car around the corner from the bank building. There were three other cars parked on the street—none of them occupied. I stepped to the corner and peered around. It was raining gently and I didn’t have a hat. Temp in the mid-fifties. I checked my watch. In five minutes I was damp all over. After ten I was wet. I hugged the building, trying to stay out of most of the rain. The wind came up, a gentle breeze, and I began to chill. Say what you will, this spook business was for the dogs.

  I had been standing in the rain for seventeen minutes when a dark sedan came slowly from the other direction and stopped immediately in front of the bank. Two men got ou
t, adjusted their clothes and weapons, looked around, then tried the door to the building. It was still unlocked. They went in. The driver stayed in the car and kept it running.

  In three minutes they came out with the guy I had slugged. His legs were working, but not very well—no doubt he had a concussion—and the two men supported him. They put him in the back seat of the sedan, then went back inside for the man I had shot. They carried him out. I zipped over to my ride and hopped in the passenger seat just before the car passed us, going to the left.

  “That’s them. Lay back all you can.”

  “I know how to do this, Tommy.”

  “Yeah, but I feel better giving you orders. It’s a power thing.”

  “You get off on it, I know.”

  Joe pulled out and stayed a block or so behind the sedan, which was obviously going somewhere. That somewhere turned out to be a hospital. They took him into the emergency room while we sat watching from nearly two hundred yards away. Hospital people rolled out a gurney for the gunshot victim.

  Well, at least they were decent to their friends. That was something. Maybe there was some hope for Audra Rogers after all.

  A billion dollars a week! Think about it. Talk about a score! Man, this was like winning the Power Ball Lottery.

  And yet, all that money belonged to someone, or an army of someones, and they would be very unhappy if even a significant percentage happened to disappear. Like, poof, off into cyberspace. If that happened, the boys in Stockholm were going to need to find a way off this planet, fast.

  I looked around at the server lying on the back seat. Wondered what secrets it held. Well, Sarah Houston and her colleagues would tell us, book, chapter and verse. Just put it in the diplomatic bag, and voila, it would magically appear at the CIA campus.

  When the dudes had been in the hospital for a half hour, Joe Kitty said aloud, “Wonder how long they are going to be in there.”

  “Until they come out.”

  “They could have called someone, Tommy. If they spotted us tailing them, help could be on the way with a lot more firepower than we have.”

  “Let’s move the car. Park it near the exit to that parking lot.”