The Broker

by Grisham, John

  around the trattoria to see if anyone was eavesdropping on their hushed conversation in English. When he was finally able to swallow, he said, “Let's talk about e-mail. Marco was never much of a hacker. Back in his glory days he lived on the phone-had four or five of them in his office, two in his car, one in his pocket-always juggling three conversations at once. He bragged about charging five thousand bucks just to take a phone call from a new client, that sort of crap. Never used the computer. Those who worked for him have said that he occasionally read e-mails. He rarely sent them, and when he did it was always through a secretary. His office was high-tech, but he hired people to do the grunt work. He was too much of a big shot.”

  “What about prison?”

  “No evidence of e-mail. He had a laptop which he used only for letters, never e-mail. It looks as though everyone abandoned him when he took the fall. He wrote occasionally to his mother and his son, but always used regular mail.”

  “Sounds completely illiterate.”

  “Sounds like it, but Langley's concerned that he might try and contact someone on the outside. He can't do it by phone, at least not now. He has no address he can use, so mail is probably out of the question.”

  “He'd be stupid to mail a letter,” Luigi said. “It might divulge his whereabouts.”

  “Exactly. Same for the phone, fax, everything but email.”

  “We can track email.”

  “Most of it, but there are ways around it.”

  “He has no computer and no money to buy one.”

  “I know, but, hypothetically, he could sneak into an Internet cafe, use a coded account, send the e-mail, then clean his trail, pay a small fee for the rental, and walk away.”

  “Sure, but who's gonna teach him how to do that?”

  “He can learn. He can find a book. It's unlikely, but there's always a chance.”

  “I'm sweeping his apartment every day,” Luigi said. “Every inch of it. If he buys a book or lays down a receipt, I'll know it.”

  “Scope out the Internet cafes in the neighborhood. There are several of them in Bologna now.”

  “I know them.”

  “Where's Marco right now?”

  “I don't know. It's Saturday, a day off. He's probably roaming the streets of Bologna, enjoying his freedom.” “And he's still scared?” “He's terrified.”

  Mrs. Ruby Ausberry took a mild sedative and slept for six of the eight hours it took to fly from Milano to Dulles International. The lukewarm coffee they served before landing did little to clear the cobwebs, and as the 747 taxied to the gate she dozed off again. She forgot about the birthday card as they were herded onto the cattle cars on the tarmac and driven to the main terminal. She forgot about it as she waited with the mob to claim her baggage and plod through customs. And she forgot about it when she saw her beloved granddaughter waiting for her at the arrival exit.

  She forgot about it until she was safely at home in York, Pennsylvania, and shuffling through her shoulder bag for a souvenir. “Oh my,” she said as the card fell onto the kitchen table. “I was supposed to drop this off at the airport.” Then she told her granddaughter the story of the poor guy in the Milan airport who'd just lost his passport and would miss his father's ninetieth birthday.

  Her granddaughter looked at the envelope. “Doesn't look like a birthday card,” she said. She studied the address: R. N. Backman, Attorney at Law, 412 Main Street, Culpeper, Virginia, 22701.

  “There's no return address,” the granddaughter said.

  “I'll mail it first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Ausberry said. “I hope it arrives before the birthday.”

  At ten Monday morning in Singapore, the mysterious $3 mil

  lion

  sitting in the account of Old Stone Group, Ltd, made an electronic exit and began a quiet journey to the other side of the world. Nine hours later, when the doors of the Galleon Bank and Trust opened on the Caribbean island of Saint Christopher, the money arrived promptly and was deposited in a numbered account with no name. Normally it would have been a completely anonymous transaction, one of several thousand that Monday morning, but Old Stone now had the full attention of the FBI. The bank in Singapore was cooperating fully. The bank on Saint Christopher was not, though it would soon get the opportunity to participate.

  When Director Anthony Price arrived in his office at the Hoover Building before dawn on Monday, the hot memo was waiting. He canceled everything planned for that morning. He huddled with his team and waited for the money to land on Saint Christopher.

  Then he called the vice president.

  It took four hours of undiplomatic arm-breaking to shake the information loose on Saint Christopher. At first the bankers refused to budge, but what small quasi-nation can withstand the full might and fury of the world's only superpower? When the vice president threat

  ened the prime minister with economic and banking sanctions that would destroy what little economy the island was clinging to, he finally knuckled under and turned on his bankers.

  The numbered account could be directly traced to Artie Morgan, the thirty-one-year-old son of the former president. He'd been in and out of the Oval Office during the final hours of his father's administration, sipping Heinekens and occasionally dispensing advice to both Critz and the President.

  The scandal was ripening by the hour.

  From Grand Cayman to Singapore and now to Saint Christopher, the wiring bore the telltale signs of an amateur trying to cover his tracks. A professional would've split the money eight ways and parked it in several different banks in different countries, and the wires would've been months apart. But even a rookie like Artie should've been able to hide the cash. The offshore banks he selected were secretive enough to protect him. The break for the feds had been the mutual-fund crook desperate to avoid prison.

  However, there was still no evidence as to the source of the money. In his last three days in office, President Morgan granted twenty-two pardons. All went unnoticed except two: Joel Backman and Duke Mongo. The FBI was hard at work digging for financial dirt on the other twenty. Who had $3 million? Who had the resources to get it? Every friend, family member, and business associate was being scrutinized by the feds.

  A preliminary analysis repeated what was already known. Mongo had billions and was certainly corrupt enough to bribe anyone. Backman, too, could pull it off. A third possibility was a former New Jersey state legislator whose family made a bundle in government road contracts. Twelve years earlier he'd gone to “federal camp” for a few months and now wanted his rights restored.

  The President was off in Europe, in the middle of his get- acquainted tour, his first victory lap around the world. He wouldn't be back for three days, and the vice president decided to wait. They would watch the money, double- and triple-check the facts and details, and when he returned they would brief him with an airtight case. A cashforpardon scandal would electrify the country. It would humiliate the opposition party and weaken its resolve in Congress. It would ensure that Anthony Price would head the FBI for a few more years. It would

  finally send old Teddy Maynard off to the retirement home. There was simply no downside to the launching of a full federal blitz against an unsuspecting ex-president.

  His tutor was waiting in the back pew of the Basilica di San Francesco. She was still bundled, with her gloved hands stuck partially in the pockets of her heavy overcoat. It was snowing again outside, and in the vast, cold, empty sanctuary the temperature was not much warmer. He sat beside her and offered a soft “Buon giorno.”

  She acknowledged him with just enough of a smile to be considered polite, and said, uBuon giorno." He kept his hands in his pockets too, and for a long time they sat like two frozen hikers hiding from the weather. As usual, her face was sad and her thoughts were on something other than this bumbling Canadian businessman who wanted to speak her language. She was aloof and distracted and Marco was fed up with her attitude. Ermanno was losing interest by the day. Francesca was barely t
olerable. Luigi was always back there, lurking and watching, but he, too, seemed to be losing interest in the game.

  Marco was beginning to think that the break was about to happen. Cut the lifeline and set him adrift to sink or swim on his own. So be it. He'd been free for almost a month. He'd learned enough Italian to survive. He could certainly learn more by himself.

  “So how old is this one?” he said after it became apparent that he was expected to speak first.

  She shifted slightly, cleared her throat, took her hands out of her pockets, as if he'd awakened her from a deep sleep. “It was begun in 1236 by some Franciscan monks. Thirty years later the main sanctuary here was complete.”

  “A rush job.”

  “Yes, quite fast. Over the centuries the chapels sort of sprang up along both sides. The sacristy was built, then the bell tower. The French, under Napoleon, deconsecrated it in 1798 and turned it into a customs house. In 1886 it was converted back to a church, then restored in 1928. When Bologna was bombed by the Allies its facade was extensively damaged. It's had a rough history.”

  “It's not very pretty on the outside.”

  “Bombing will do that.”

  “I guess you picked the wrong side.”

  “Bologna did not.”

  No sense refighting the war. They paused as their voices seemed to float up and echo slightly around the dome. Backman's mother had taken him to church a few times each year as a child, but that halfhearted effort at pursuing a faith had been abandoned quickly in high school and totally forgotten over the past forty years. Not even prison could convert him, unlike some of the other inmates. But it was still difficult for a man with no convictions to understand how any style of meaningful worship could be conducted in a such a cold, heartless museum.

  “It seems so empty. Does anyone ever worship in this place?”

  “There's a daily mass and sendees on Sunday. I was married here.”

  “You're not supposed to talk about yourself. Luigi will get mad.”

  “Italian, Marco, no more English.” In Italian, she asked him, “What did you study this morning with Ermanno?”

  “La famiglia.”

  “La sua famiglia. Mi dica.” Tell me about your family.

  “It's a real mess,” he said in English.

  “Sua moglie?” Your wife?

  “Which one? I have three.”

  “Italian.”

  “Quale? Ne ho tre.”

  “L'ultima.” The last one.

  Then he caught himself. He was not Joel Backman, with three ex-wives and a screwed-up family. He was Marco Lazzeri from Toronto, with a wife, four children, and five grandchildren. “I was kidding,” he said in English. “I have one wife.”

  “Mi dica, in Italiano, di sua moglie?” Tell me about your wife.

  In very slow Italian, Marco described his fictional wife. Her name is Laura. She is fifty-two years old. She lives in Toronto. She works for a small company. She does not like to travel. And so on.

  Every sentence was repeated at least three times. Every mispronunciation was met with a grimace and a quick “Ripeta.” Over and over, Marco went on and on about a Laura who did not exist. And when he finished with her, he was led to his oldest child, another ere

  ation, this one named Alex. Thirty years old, a lawyer in Vancouver, divorced with two kids, etc., etc.

  Fortunately, Luigi had given him a little biography on Marco Lazzeri, complete with all the data he was now reaching for in the back of a frigid church. She prodded him on, urging perfection, cautioning against speaking too fast, the natural tendency.

  “Deve parlare lentamente,” she kept saying. You must speak slowly.

  She was strict and no fun, but also very motivational. If he could learn to speak Italian half as well as she spoke English, then he would be ahead of the pack. If she believed in constant repetition, then so did he.

  As they were discussing his mother, an elderly gentleman entered the church and sat in the pew directly in front of them. He was soon lost in meditation and prayer. They decided to make a quiet exit. A light snow was still falling and they stopped at the first cafe for espresso and a smoke.

  “Adesso, possiamo parlare della sua famiglia?” he asked. Can we talk about your family now?

  She smiled, showed teeth, a rarity, and said, “Benissimo, Marco.” Very good. “Ma, non possiamo. Mi displace.” But, I'm sorry. We cannot.

  “Perche non?” Why not?

  “Abbiamo delle regole.” We have rules.

  “Dov'e suo marito?” Where is your husband?

  “Qui, a Bologna.” Here, in Bologna.

  “Dov'e lavora?” Where does he work?

  “Non lavora.”

  After her second cigarette they ventured back onto the covered sidewalks and began a thorough lesson about snow. She delivered a short sentence in English, and he was supposed to translate it. It is snowing. It never snows in Florida. Maybe it will snow tomorrow. It snowed twice last week. I love the snow. I don't like snow.

  They skirted the edge of the main plaza and stayed under the porticoes. On Via Rizzoli they passed the store where Marco bought his boots and his parka and he thought she might like to hear his version of that event. He could handle most of the Italian. He let it pass, though, since she was so engrossed in the weather. At an intersection

  they stopped and looked at Le Due Torri, the two surviving towers that the Bolognesi were so proud of.

  There were once more than two hundred towers, she said. Then she asked him to repeat the sentence. He tried, butchered the past tense and the number, and was then asked to repeat the damn sentence until he got it right.

  In medieval times, for reasons present-day Italians cannot explain, their ancestors seized upon the unusual architectural compulsion of building tall slender towers in which to live. Since tribal wars and local hostilities were epidemic, the towers were meant principally for protection. They were effective lookout posts and valuable during attacks, though they proved to be less than practical as living quarters. To protect the food, the kitchens were often on the top floor, three hundred or so steps above the street, which made it difficult to find dependable domestic help. When fights broke out, the warring families were known to simply launch arrows and fling spears at each other from one offending tower to the other. No sense fighting in the streets like common folk.

  They also became quite the status symbol. No self-respecting noble could allow his neighbor and/or rival to have a taller tower, so in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a curious game of oneupmanship raged over the skyline of Bologna as the nobles tried to keep up with the Joneses. The city was nicknamed la turrita, the towered one. An English traveler described it as a “bed of asparagus.”

  By the fourteenth century organized government was gaining a foothold in Bologna, and those with vision knew that the warring nobles had to be reined in. The city, whenever it had enough muscle to get away with it, tore down many of the towers. Age and gravity took care of others; poor foundations crumbled after a few centuries.

  In the late 1800s, a noisy campaign to tear them all down was narrowly approved. Only two survived-Asinelli and Garisenda. Both stand near each other at the Piazza di Porto Ravegnana. Neither stands exactly straight, with Garisenda drifting off to the north at an angle that rivals the more famous, and far prettier, one in Pisa. The two old survivors have evoked many colorful descriptions over the decades. A French poet likened them to two drunk sailors staggering home, trying to lean on one another for support. Ermanno's guidebook referred to them as the “Laurel and Hardy” of medieval architecture.

  La Torre degli Asinelli was built in the early twelfth century, and, at 97.2 meters, is twice as tall as its partner. Garisenda began leaning as it was almost completed in the thirteenth century, and was chopped in half in an effort to stop the tilt. The Garisenda clan lost interest and abandoned the city in disgrace.

  Marco had learned the history from Ermanno's book. Francesca didn't know this, and she, like
all good guides, took fifteen cold minutes to talk about the famous towers. She formulated a simple sentence, delivered it perfectly, helped Marco stumble through it, then grudgingly went to the next one.

  “Asinelli has four hundred and ninety-eight steps to the top,” she said.

  “Andiamo,” Marco said quickly. Let his go. They entered the thick foundation through a narrow door, followed a tight circular staircase up fifty feet or so to where the ticket booth had been stuck in a corner. He bought two tickets at three euros each, and they started the climb. The tower was hollow, with the stairs fixed to the outside walls.

  Francesca said she hadn't climbed it in at least ten years, and seemed excited about their little adventure. She took off, up the narrow, sturdy oak steps, with Marco keeping his distance behind. An occasional small open window allowed light and cold air to filter in. “Pace yourself,” she called over her shoulder, in English, as she slowly pulled away from Marco. On that snowy February afternoon there were no others climbing to the top of the city.

  He paced himself and she was soon out of sight. About halfway up, he stopped at a large window so the wind could cool his face. He caught his breath, then took off again, even slower now. A few minutes later, he stopped again, his heart pounding away, his lungs working overtime, his mind wondering if he could make it. After 498 steps he finally emerged from the boxlike attic and stepped onto the top of the tower. Francesca was smoking a cigarette, gazing upon her beautiful city, no sign of sweat anywhere on her face.

  The view from the top was panoramic. The red tile roofs of the city were covered with two inches of snow. The pale green dome of San Bartolomeo was directly under them, refusing any accumulation. “On a clear day, you can see the Adriatic Sea to the east, and the Alps to the north,” she said, still in English. “It's just beautiful, even in the snow.”

  “Just beautiful,” he said, almost panting. The wind whipped through the metal bars between the brick posts, and it was much colder above Bologna than on its streets.

  “The tower is the fifth-tallest structure in old Italy,” she said proudly. He was certain she could name the other four.