by Brian Lumley
“No, he didn’t get the numbers,” she answered, “but he did get the name of the bank: a branch of the rather obscure Burger Finanz Gruppe, or Citizens Finance Group. In fact it’s the only branch we were able to find, and I think if we were to dig just a little deeper we might well discover that it’s owned—or was owned—by Manchester himself! His own little piggy bank, as it were. Anyway, as you know, seven years ago most of the world’s countries, or their governments, were signatory to a convention that opened up their banking systems to scrutiny. This was supposed to spell doom for the world’s crooked, high-finance speculators, and write finis on the money-laundering activities of the organized crime syndicates. It was supposed to, but didn’t, mainly because several major players wouldn’t sign up to it.”
“I remember,” Trask nodded. “Russia, China, Italy, Greece, oh, and one or two South American countries, naturally.”
“And Switzerland!” she told him. “For in case you’ve forgotten, some of the big Swiss banks are still fighting off Second World War Jewish claims on massive sums of money that the Nazis stole and stashed away. As for Italy: well, the Italians didn’t at all fancy the idea of opening up their Mafia-riddled banking systems to scrutiny. And Greece didn’t have any cash worth arguing over! The Chinese weren’t interested; indeed, in light of China’s alleged ‘lack of crime’—the fact that under its then regime merely socializing with international criminals was punishable by long terms in their infamous ‘correction faculties’—they felt insulted! And then there were those South American countries you mentioned, which for obvious reasons wanted nothing at all to do with it. As for poor old Ma Russia: well, financially speaking the Russians didn’t know—and still haven’t discovered—which way’s up …”
She paused again, and Trask noticed she was looking a little pensive.
“Go on,” he urged her.
She shrugged and went on, but mainly on the defensive now. “The trouble is,” she started slowly, “that I’ve always been an eager beaver, you know? Sort of rushing in where angels fear to tread? And this time I may have sailed too close to the wind.”
“You’re certainly full of cliches,” Trask’s eyes had narrowed. “And perhaps just a little of the other stuff, too?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t try to, er, ‘shit’ you, Ben Trask,” Millie said. “No, not you.”
“So get on with it.”
“Well,” she shrugged, “I suppose that I really should have got authority before I, er …”
“Before you what?”
“Er, before I spoke to the Burger Finanz Gruppe bank,” she told him, and paused yet again.
Trask sighed and said, “This is like pulling teeth! So who did you, ‘er,’ speak to at the bank?”
“Not me, exactly,” she answered. “I mean I didn’t speak to anyone—or thing—at the bank. But I got our tame tech, Jimmy Harvey, to do it for me …”
And now things came together.
First the time: an hour ago in UK it was nine at night in Zurich. The banks would be closed. And Millie had said she didn’t speak to anyone—or thing—but that Jimmy Harvey had done it for her. Harvey, a tech, one of E-Branch’s whiz-kid communications and covert surveillance experts. The answer was obvious.
“You got Jimmy to hack into the bank’s computer?” Trask’s question was more an accusation, and his stare was penetrating.
Still looking innocent, but not, Millie tried to shrug but her shoulders weren’t working. “The work of five minutes,” she said nervously. “Enough time to get in, get Manchester’s file, download a few details—like all deposits and withdrawals for the last five years—and get out again.”
“A criminal act,” Trask told her bleakly. “But more especially so if it served no purpose except to get me in trouble!”
“But it did serve a purpose.”
“What did you get?”
“We got that someone had transferred a large sum—namely three quarters of a million dollars US—from one of Manchester’s accounts just twenty-four hours after he died.”
“You’re forgiven!” Trask said, suddenly excited. “If these were numbered, personal accounts, no one but Manchester himself—or a ‘partner’—could touch them. And we had made sure that news of the ‘tragic accident’ at his retreat wouldn’t break until after our Australian friends had sanitized the mess on that island. So even Haggard, Haggard and Heyt wouldn’t have had any reason to be interested in those numbered accounts just twenty-four hours after Manchester died. And even if they had it’s unlikely they’d have the authority to move large sums of his ill-gotten gains around … is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“So, I think you’re probably right and this was Malinari’s work. And—”
“But it didn’t have to be,” she cut in.
Trask’s face fell. But then he looked at her suspiciously, frowningly, and said, “Go on.”
“Well, it could have been a payment to one of Manchester’s beneficiaries, I mean, one of the many charities he gave to.”
“What, after he was dead?”
“A standing order, maybe?” she answered. “I mean, it could have been in the computer, waiting to automatically click in on a certain date.”
Trask shook his head. “Millie,” he said, “you’re a devious female creature. What you just said wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. It was a ‘what if?’ Now, I know you wouldn’t pick me up just to drop me again, so for whatever reason you’ve got to be teasing me. Well, believe me this is neither the time nor the place. So without more ado, let’s have the rest of it—or is this perhaps one of your stumbling blocks?”
“It could have been,” she answered. “For you see, the transfer was made to a charity.”
Trask’s face fell further yet. “Say again?”
“To charity number nineteen, of nineteen numbered charities,” she nodded.
“No name or names?”
“Er, no,” Millie shook her head. “Not of the charity. Just numbers. It was the fifth semiannual payment to a charity that Manchester had been supporting for two years.”
“So what’s our interest in it?” Trask knew the punch line was coming. He read it in her face: that indeed she’d got something. But what?
“I’ve got the big one!” Millie had read his mind, literally. “That’s what I’ve got.”
“Do I have to say please?” he said.
She shook her head again. “No, but there are still stumbling blocks. So what do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”
“The good,” he said.
“The previous payments to charity number nineteen were all in the sum of a quarter million dollars, all of them authorized by telephone by Manchester using his PIN and various authentication codes. Ah, but this transfer tripled that amount, and of course it wasn’t Manchester’s PIN but his partner’s. It’s dated the day after Manchester died—and the name of the partner is on Jimmy Harvey’s printout.”
All of this time she had been clasping a roll of printout. Now she stepped around Trask’s desk to stand beside him, leaned over him and opened up the roll, and weighted it top and bottom with desk bric-a-brac. Trask saw that it was page fifteen, torn from a far larger printout. But then his eyes skipped to a serial that had been highlighted in yellow.
The details of date, time, and amount, were all as Millie had reported them, but Trask scarcely noticed them beside the one item that seemed to leap at him from the paper: the name in the authorization column … Aristotle Milan! Malinari’s pseudonym!
And as that hated name burned itself into his brain, Millie said: “It’s the first time in two years that Malinari has given himself away like this. Other times when he’s used Manchester’s account, he’s had Manchester himself authorize it. This time he had no choice because his ‘partner’ was dead.”
Trask felt galvanized. In his excitement he had started to his feet. He stared at the printout, glared at it, unwilling to take his eyes off the paper in case it should disapp
ear. It was the best lead yet … possibly as good as the one that had sent him out to Australia. But—
“The extra money,” he said, frowning, “or maybe all of it, is obviously for his use while he gets himself set up again. So why didn’t he take more?”
“Maybe he doesn’t think he needs more,” she said. “Perhaps he didn’t want to alarm the bank. I can’t say. But don’t forget the extraps: our three years are up—you said so yourself—and things could be coming to a head. Maybe money won’t be important in the world that Malinari and the others are planning.”
“But we trampled on at least a third of those plans out in Australia!” Trask protested.
She nodded. “So now maybe they’re going to speed things up a little. For as you also pointed out during your pep talk, the Wamphyri know for sure now that we’re after them …”
Feeling tired, Trask sat down again. His mind was finding it hard to take in everything that Millie was telling him; the picture wouldn’t firm up until the last piece was in place and he could scan the whole thing. And so: “Okay, now you can tell me the bad news,” he said, angling his head to look up at her.
“Another one of those stumbling blocks I mentioned,” Millie said.
“Like what?”
“Well, like I said—the charity is just a number: number nineteen of nineteen charities. There has to be a separate file that details exactly who, what, and where this charity is, but Jimmy didn’t have the time he would need to hack into any more files. Let’s face it, there could be thousands of them!”
“He didn’t have the time?” Trask was astonished. “What are we paying him for? He could make time!”
Millie was looking uncomfortable again. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “The bank’s computer was programmed with a whole bag of countermeasures. Jimmy worked wonders but he could override them for only so long before getting locked out.” She shrugged helplessly. “So that even if you’d sanction it—”
“Which I would—which I do—almost anything!”
“—We can’t get back in. Er, and that’s not all.”
“Their system has probably backtracked us down!” Trask got there first. “And there’ll almost certainly be an official protest. Which means tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’ll have our Minister Responsible bleating at me on the blower!”
“And I know that when you get bleated at, we can expect to get it in the neck, too,” she said.
“Hence all of the shilly-shallying,” Trask growled at her, “when you could have come straight to the point and maybe saved us a little time.”
“But I wanted you to see how clever I was,” she said, “and appreciate me for it. Which might take some of the sting out of it when you get around to shouting at me.”
“Do I do too much of that?” Trask asked her, and shook his head, promising, “No shouting. Why, if I were ten years younger I might even try to kiss you!”
“What’s age got to do with it?” she said. “You’re as young as you feel, or as someone can make you feel.”
Trask knew a different version of that, which went: “You’re as young as the one you’re feeling,” but he didn’t say so. Suddenly he was very aware of Millie’s perfume where she was standing close beside him.
But as if she’d read his mind—and perhaps she had—she went back around to the front of his desk and stood there looking at him in that way of hers. One of her ways, anyway.
“Er, you said stumbling blocks,” Trask said, bringing his thoughts to order. “More than the ones you’ve mentioned, presumably. Okay, I can see one such: we don’t know where the money went, which is where Malinari is. But we’re talking about three quarters of a million dollars here. Surely we can trace it?”
“We tried,” Millie told him. “That international convention I mentioned? No problem; any major signatory can gain entry to the database. With our security rating Jimmy simply accessed it, went in, and took a look.”
“And?”
“Would you believe that on that date about that time there were more than twenty movements of that precise number of dollars left, right, and centre around the world? Well, there were, but not one was destined for charities real or contrived.”
Trask understood what she was saying. “Manchester’s money went to a nonsignatory country, which is to say Italy, Greece, China, Russia, or one of those South American places.”
“Or Switzerland itself,” she reminded him again.
By now Trask’s mind had sorted itself out. He was thinking again, and doing an excellent job of it. “That makes for a hell of a lot of places where Malinari could be,” he said. “The way I see it, this so-called charity can only be one of his friends from Starside. When they came into this world they split up. He ended up in Australia, but where did the others go? Well wherever, he now needs a safe haven and has fled to one of them. And why not, since he’s been subsidizing that one—let’s continue to call it a ‘charity’—for the last two years. Okay, we know where he hasn’t gone: to one of the signatory countries. So now let’s see if we can eliminate some of the places where he might have gone.”
“I’m with you,” she answered.
Trask waved her to a chair and told her: “Millie, sit down for God’s sake … or mine, at least! It’s nine-thirty at night and you’re still mobile. You’re tiring me out, little sister.”
“Funny,” she said, seating herself and crossing her pretty legs, “but I thought I’d woken you up! Anyway, let’s do some of this eliminating.”
“You’re way ahead of me, right?” he said. “Okay, go on.”
“Well,” she began, “for five years now—ever since Hong Kong’s third big financial collapse—China has hidden herself away behind a bamboo curtain, convinced that the decadent, capitalist West is deliberately trying to destabilize her. And now they have this plague to contend with, a new bubonic strain running rampant through China and spreading west, which they haven’t the resources to combat. Also, what with their current disinclination toward foreign types in their country, especially rich foreigners, but including diplomats and aid agencies, well they’re not the most friendly of people. In short, there aren’t too many Westerners retiring to Beijing these days! And I don’t think Malinari would go there either.”
“Strike China,” said Trask. “And probably Russia, too. Oh, Malinari’s dollars would be welcome there, for sure, but I have it on good authority that he wouldn’t be. Gustav Turchin is the new head of the Opposition, and I’ve already alerted him to the threat.”
“Which leaves Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and South America,” she said.
“Of which I fancy Switzerland,” Trask nodded. “Or perhaps South America?” Concentration lined his face. “Switzerland has high mountains and it’s cold. Quite appealing, I should think, to someone—or something—from Starside.”
“Not necessarily,” Millie answered. “I read your preliminary report on the Aussie job, and I was at your pep talk. You make a point of saying that Malinari was where we would least expect to find him. So why not the others? Personally, I would think that the most Switzerland has going for it is its neutrality, its autonomy, and the fact that it welcomes people with lots of money. But Greece and Italy aren’t dismissive of high rollers either.”
“This gets us nowhere fast,” Trask stood up. “Or should I say somewhere slowly? Whichever, it’s given me a headache. And it’s way past drinkies time. Also, I haven’t eaten yet. You?”
“I’m trying to watch my figure,” she said. “But—”
“It looks fine to me,” he told her uncharacteristically. So uncharacteristically that he could bite his tongue off.
“—But,” she continued, “if you insist?”
“I do.”
Millie smiled and said, “Our first date!”
And as Trask put on a tie and shrugged into his jacket, he found himself wondering, Just how long have I been going blind, anyway?
For the “truth” of something had suddenly
become astonishingly clear to him—which made him also wonder how long she’d been hiding it from him.
Three years, maybe? Long enough for him to recover? Millie was thoughtful that way. The only trouble was that Trask didn’t think he’d recovered yet.
Not yet, no …
4
OF STRANGE PLACES, SURVIVALS, AND SUPERSTITIONS
The term “E-Branch” wasn’t known to the staff of the hotel downstairs; to them, the upper floor was the headquarters of a firm of multifaceted international entrepreneurs, whatever that was supposed to mean. But Trask and his upper echelon were known to them, especially to the head waiter of the excellent restaurant and carvery: the peculiar hours that the “upstairs people” were wont to work—and at which they occasionally dined—sometimes made for problems in the kitchen. Such as tonight. The hour was late and the kitchen had been busy all day.
Trask and Millie took a table in a spot favoured by Branch personnel: a slightly elevated alcove surrounded by small palms in half-barrels, and varnished pine trelliswork interwoven with imitation clematis and bougainvillaea. Sufficiently remote from the rest of the restaurant, it was considered safe to talk business here; but to be absolutely certain, Jimmy Harvey or one of the other techs would eat here now and then and check the place for bugs … the electrical variety. To date, they hadn’t discovered any.
Seating his companion and then himself, Trask reached for a pitcher and poured water into two glasses. He would have preferred to get straight back to their conversation, but decided to wait until they had ordered. The short walk to the elevator and the ride down had provided an ideal opportunity to get the blood flowing to his brain again and process Millie’s information; he felt more able to concentrate; his weariness, more mental than physical, was lifting moment by moment.
Which made him wonder out loud:
“That office of mine. I sometimes feel isolated in there. Is it my imagination, do you think, or has it got smaller over the years?”
“The whole world is smaller,” Millie answered. “A touch of claustrophobia, maybe?”
Trask shook his head. “I’ve been down in the Perchorsk Complex under the Urals, the site of the Russian Gate. I know what claustrophobia is! If you ever get the chance to see that place—which I hope you never do—you’ll see what I mean. No, it’s not claustrophobia, nothing physical, anyway. Though certainly I sense things closing in on me … or on us.” His sigh, involuntary though it was, gave a lot away.
