The Bancroft Strategy

by Robert Ludlum

  “How big is this installation?”

  He returned to his college-tour voice. “More than a hundred thousand linear feet, on three levels. Atmosphere is monitored, with automatic CO2 correction and humidity control. This ain’t no town library. Like I say, you really don’t want to get lost, and you really don’t want to misplace your badge. There’s a computer console at every stop of the elevator that you can use to get location coordinates for your research needs. There are numbers or letters corresponding to level, sector, row, rank, and shelf. I always say, it’s easy once you get the hang of it, but almost nobody ever gets the hang of it.”

  “Appreciate the vote of confidence,” Andrea said wanly. She knew such facilities were big, but she had no conception of just how big until she entered the slow-moving glass elevator and gazed through the sides as she descended to the bottom level. It was like an underground city, some expressionist conceit, something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. A catacomb for the digital age. Microfiche, microfilm, paper files, medical records, backup tapes, every storage device known to man: everything that companies and municipalities were legally required to retain, and much more. It all ended up here, neatly catalogued and preserved in facilities like this one, vast cemeteries of the information age.

  She felt a heavy bleakness descend on her, perhaps because of the dimness of the light or a curious interaction between the normally opposite anxieties of agoraphobia and claustrophobia—the sense of being encrypted in a vastness. Let’s just get this over with, she coached herself. Now she walked across a seemingly endless concrete floor, following a white line, numbers in stenciled light-blue paint: 3l 2:566-999. The badge around her neck silently announced her presence, flicking on lights; some sort of electronic chip embedded inside must have responded to radio signals in a certain way. The air was curiously dustless, and it was cooler than she had anticipated; she was already sorry she hadn’t brought a sweater. All around her were vast steel shelves, extending all the way to the fourteen-foot ceilings. Small collapsible ladders were available at the end of each six-foot-long shelf segment. The place was really designed for spider monkeys, she decided.

  She rounded the corner and turned down the next aisle; once again, a series of lights startled her by blinking on, activated by her badge sensor. It took her a good fifteen minutes of walking and searching before she located the first tranche of papers she was looking for. Having located it, she spent another hour before she came upon something that looked peculiarly like a loose thread.

  Foreign-exchange data. Most people would have made nothing of it, but she knew better. When organizations were making a sizable conversion of U.S. currency into foreign currencies—in preparation for purchases or payments in other countries—they often established a hedge to protect themselves from adverse swings in currency valuation. At irregular intervals, the Bancroft Foundation had done so.

  Why? Ordinary acquisitions of property or infrastructure used the standard protocols of international banking, facilitated by the major institutions of global finance. These currency hedges suggested large-scale cash infusions. To what end? In the modern economy, large amounts of cash suggested activities that were extralegal. Graft? Or something else entirely?

  She was starting to feel like a Mohican tracker. She could not see the forest creature, but she could see a few broken twigs, an odd deposit of spoor, and she knew where it had been.

  A hundred feet above her, the man with the deep-set eyes keyed in the woman’s badge number, and the multipaneled video screen in front of him lighted up with feeds from the cameras that operated in her immediate vicinity. He zoomed in with a few clicks of the mouse, then rotated the image so that he could read the type on the page. The Bancroft Foundation. He had standing instructions in a case like this. Probably this was no big deal. Probably this was one of their own—the honey’s name was Bancroft, after all. But they weren’t paying him to think. They were paying him to give them the heads-up. Yo, Kev, that’s why you get the big bucks. Okay, not big maybe, but compared to the pittance he got from Secure Archive Inc., it was damn generous. He picked up his telephone, his finger hovering over the number pad. Then he returned the handset to the cradle. Better not to leave a record at work. He took out his cell phone and placed the call.

  It was that evening that Belknap’s bogus chorus affiliation proved its true worth. That evening, a reception, in honor of the international choral festival, was held at the residence of the country’s president. The Empire State Chorus was among the groups that were scheduled to perform at a goodwill concert following it. For top-level Estonian ministers, attendance was obligatory. For Belknap, a plan foggily drafted would now be made concrete.

  Logy from too little sleep and a heavy meal of fried pork and kali, Belknap was the last one on the bus that was taking the chorus to its destination, Kadriorg Palace, on Weizenbergi Street, in the northern district of the city. He sat next to a straw-haired young man with puppy-dog eyes and a wide elastic grin who endlessly repeated the words “tender as a poem, tough as steel,” pouncing on the t’s with saliva-spewing force. Behind him, a pair of altos were singing “how fair thou art and bright.”

  Belknap was wearing the same Empire State Chorus badge that everyone else had on. He concentrated on blending in, adopting that slightly dazed, slightly dazzled expression that they all seemed to have, not to mention the hair-trigger grins.

  The Kadriorg park, like so much of Estonia’s grandeur, was a legacy of Peter the Great: Russian richesse in the wake of Russian domination. Many of the pavilions had been turned into museums and concert halls, but the main part of the palace remained an official residence of the president, used for occasions of state—and, for Estonians, an international choral festival certainly counted as that. The largest building was two stories—two extremely grand stories, a baroque fantasy of white pilasters on red stone. Just up the hill, in a matching but somewhat simplified style, was the presidential palace, built in 1938, a year when, even as darkness overtook much of Europe, Estonia thought it saw a new dawn. A freshly inked constitution promised to guarantee democratic freedoms after four years of dictatorship; it did not last the year. Nor did the desperate attempts to preserve Baltic neutrality. The building enshrined illusory hopes; perhaps, Belknap mused, that was why it was so handsome.

  Outside the palace was a tented makeshift vestibule, providing what passed as security in Tallinn. He saw Calvin Garth conferring with a blue-suited security officer, flashing documentation. Then the members of his chorus were waved through. Belknap made sure that his badge was prominently displayed as he fell into step with the others. Though he was more than a decade older than any of the real chorus members, he plastered a bemused grin on his face and was not stopped for additional scrutiny.

  The foyer was lavishly decorated with intricate stucco work and plaster ornaments that rose to the level of sculpture. He exchanged glances with the young men and women in the chorus and pretended to be as overawed as they were. The banquet hall, where the reception was held, was already crowded, he was relieved to see. Now, stepping toward a wall, he pretended to examine a painting of the Empress Catherine while removing the badge from his jacket. This was the tricky part: Arriving as one person, he swiftly had to become another.

  Not just anybody, either. He was now Roger Delamain, of Grinnell International. He replaced the soapy grin on his face with a look of slightly imperious suspicion, and quickly glanced around. Though he had previously studied the faces of the country’s high-level ministers, he would still have to wing it. The president was easily distinguished: With his bushy eyebrows and mane of white-silver hair, he was the very type of the ceremonial head of state, the well-educated man with a gift for making orotund pronouncements. He shook hands in a practiced squeeze-and-smile motion, although the real skill, as Belknap now saw, was in his ability to detach—for the man had to remove himself from one guest in order to greet another, swiftly, invisibly, having a moment of conversational significance that
did not allow for entanglement. Belknap drifted closer. Flypaper questions were treated as witticisms, eliciting appreciative chuckles, or, depending upon tonal clues, as somber reflections that the president would surely take to heart. Handclasp, eye-lock, smile, dismiss. Handclasp, eye-lock, smile, dismiss. He was a virtuoso; the Estonian parliament did not go wrong in elevating him to this post.

  The prime minister was, like most of his cabinet, dressed in navy blue. Less skilled at detachment than the president, he was nodding with exaggerated enthusiasm, trapped in conversation with a stout woman—doubtless some notable in the music world—even as his eyes were desperately sending out distress flares to his aides. The minister of culture—a man with a suet complexion and what looked like grease-paint eyebrows—was talking expansively to a group of Westerners, evidently in the middle of a joke or humorous anecdote, because he kept interrupting himself with pants of laughter. The man Belknap was looking for—the deputy trade minister—had a rather different mien. The glass in his hand, with a small wedge of lime on one side, probably contained nothing stronger than seltzer. His eyes were small and shadowed beneath a prominent, widow’s-peaked forehead. He was not speaking, but nodding, and spent little time with any one group.

  Andrus Pärt was the deputy minister’s name, and, by Gennady’s reckoning, it would be worth Belknap’s while to get to know him. The logic was elementary. The mogul he was seeking was big. The nation of Estonia was small. Andrus Pärt, Gennady assured Belknap, had contacts with all the major figures of Estonia’s private sector, licit and illicit. Nobody operated in a small Baltic republic without reaching an accommodation with high-ranking members of the government. Andrus Pärt would know the players; he would know the man Belknap was hunting. As soon as the operative laid eyes on him, indeed, he felt all the more certain of it. The nose of the Hound, he mused.

  Now came the hard part. Belknap drifted through clusters and crowds, across costly carpet and costlier parquet, until he was a few feet from the deputy minister. He wore an expression distinct from the usual ingratiating smiles at a reception like this one; he was a man on business. To a politician, the overly unctuous smile was a signal to move right along. But Belknap could not be discourteous, either. A tight, wary smile flashed on his face as he turned to the deputy minister.

  “The honorable Andrus Pärt, if I’m not mistaken,” Belknap said. His accent was flat, ambiguous, the English of someone who had learned it as a foreign language but at posh schools.

  “That’s right,” the deputy minister said blandly. Yet Belknap could tell he was intrigued. This was not a gathering of people conversant with Estonian politics, and Belknap’s level gaze was not that of the usual partygoer.

  “Curiously, we’ve never met,” Belknap said carefully. Another morsel that would prolong the man’s interest: It was a statement that suggested that there might have been reason for them to have met. A glimmer of interest appeared on Pärt’s face, doubtless for the first time this evening. “I’ve been asked to remedy this.”

  “Have you?” The Estonian’s hooded eyes betrayed little. “And why is that?”

  “Forgive me.” Only now did Belknap extend a hand, and he did so with an air of noblesse. “Roger Delamain.”

  The deputy minister’s eyes began to scan the room. “Of Grinnell International,” Belknap added meaningfully. The name belonged to an actual managing director of Grinnell; if the man looked him up, he would find a corporate biography, though no photograph.

  “Grinnell,” the Estonian repeated. He gave Belknap a look that spoke volumes, all of them in a foreign language. “Really. Are you developing a musical division, then?” A quick, twitchlike smile. “Military music, perhaps?”

  “It is my great passion,” Belknap said, gesturing around him. “The Estonian traditions of singing. This is not an occasion I could pass up.”

  “It fills us with pride,” Pärt replied automatically.

  “I’m devoted to other Estonian traditions as well,” Belknap said quickly. “I’m afraid I’m not here strictly due to my amateur interests. You understand. It is the nature of Grinnell’s operations. Unpredictable, sudden demands. They arrive with little notice and the company’s directors, like myself, must scurry to cope with them.”

  “I only wish I could be of service.”

  Belknap’s smile was almost tender. “Perhaps you can be.”

  After two hours of perusing small type, Andrea’s eyes were becoming hot and scratchy, and her head was starting to throb. Battling midafternoon fatigue, she had jotted down several columns of digit and dates on a small piece of paper. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant something. She had to go on instinct at this point, do more research when she returned to planet Earth. She checked the time, and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to track down the archives from the April when her mother died. The cruelest month. Well, her cruelest month, anyway.

  The archived corporate records contained nothing that made reference to it. She leaned against the shelves, scanning the black plastic clad boxes of the bank opposite, lost in thought. There was a movement in her peripheral vision, and she turned to see an electric cart driving toward her at top speed. Aren’t they supposed to beep? she wondered fleetingly, as adrenaline pulsed through her and she stepped out of its path.

  Yet the cart now veered, tracking her movement. It was—impossible!—as if the driver wanted to hit her. She let out a shriek as she realized that the man on the cart was wearing a motorcycle helmet with a full tinted visor and face-shield. She could see only a reflection of herself when she looked at her, and somehow the image of her own terror just compounded it. At the last moment, she leaped up, sprang as high as she could with all the strength she had, and then, gripping a high shelf, pulled herself up and out of harm’s way. Oh, dear Lord!

  The cart skidded to halt, and the man on it swiftly dismounted. Now Andrea raced down the end of the bank of shelves, turned left, and plunged down another long corridor. The maze of shelving would conceal her, wouldn’t it? She ran down another corridor and made a series of erratic turns that took her deeper into the vast, dimly lighted space. She ran, her knees pumping high into the air, her crepe-soled shoes squeaking against the concrete flooring only occasionally. Finally, winded, she slid to the floor behind a support pillar at row K, rank L, and—dammit—suddenly a bank of halogens sparked on, flooding the section with light. She might as well have put a homing beacon on her head. The badge—the security badge—was designed to turn on the lights wherever she went. Listening carefully, she could hear the soft whine of the electric cart: The man in the helmet had to have been motoring after her.

  She heard footfalls, perhaps twenty feet away. Someone else, then. She craned her head, caught a glimpse of another figure, dressed in paramilitary garb, obviously armed. Not here to help her. It was a difficult Gestalt shift; for her entire life, men with guns—policemen, usually—had been on her side. They worked for her. She realized this was not everyone’s experience of the world, but it was hers. Now they were working against her, and the realization clashed with so many of her settled assumptions. The badge. She gripped it, tugged on its lanyard. The badge was betraying her. She had to leave it behind. Or was there a way to enlist it?

  With a sudden burst of speed, she darted down the end of the row and zigzagged across a few sections. She was now somewhere in P rank. She hid her badge inside a document-storage box and, just as the halogens blazed, she climbed up to the very top shelf, scuttled over a long row of metal canisters, the kind that held film or magnetic tape, and kept moving until she was at the other end of the row, where the reading lights remained dark. Had she been quiet enough? She stretched herself out on the top shelf, invisible, or so she hoped. Then she pulled out one of the heavy canisters so that she would have an angle of vision on what was happening on the floor, twelve feet beneath her.

  The man in the paramilitary garb arrived first. Not seeing her, he darted to the aisles to either side. With a look of frustration, he returne
d to the lighted section, scanning the shelves, looking either for her or for her badge. Then he spoke into a handy-talkie.

  “Bitch ditched the badge,” he said in a voice like gravel. “A goddamned risky strategy. We have kill clearance yet from Theta?”

  As he spoke, he walked further down the P-rank aisle, closer to Andrea. Timing was everything. Now she held the heavy steel canister in both hands, waiting for the shadowy figure to get to the spot she was visualizing on the floor beneath her, and—now!—she let it drop.

  She heard the man’s strangled yelp, then peered down to see him sprawled on the ground, the steel canister lying awkwardly on his skull.

  Oh, Christ what have you done, Andrea? Oh, Christ!

  A surge of nausea and revulsion rippled through her. This wasn’t her world. This was not what she did, not who she was.

  But if her assailants thought she would not resist with every fiber of her being, they had underestimated her. We have kill clearance yet? The words returned like an arctic wind.

  A fist of rage hammered in her chest. No, asshole, but I have.

  She swung down, like a child on a jungle gym, and fell on the slain man. There was a gun holstered on his belt. The sides were flat, not curved, so it was probably a pistol. She grabbed it and, by the light of the distant halogens, examined it.