because they have managed to get their fingers deep into governments around the world.” I pointed at the photo. “Think of us as lions, chasing antelope. This man is the weakest one in the herd. We’re closing in on him. He might be the CIA’s most important target.”
“Who is he?” one of the suits asked.
“He’s what we call a ‘clear skin’—no name, no confirmed nationality, although I believe he is Russian, due to other evidence we’ve received. We believe he moves and handles large amounts of cleaned cash to these global criminal networks. I call him the Money Czar.”
Brandon said, “Tell us about the networks, Sam.”
“Sure. The Mafia is an old-school criminal network—a distinct leader, a bureaucracy of muscle and money cleaners that support him. New-school networks are highly specialized. Each part—whether muscle to enforce security or to intimidate or kill, or financial to clean money, or logistics to smuggle goods—is autonomous. Each is brought in only for specific jobs, and each time it may be a different set of people to do the work. It’s therefore much harder to break the network down, to get any detailed information on how it works as a whole.”
“I know we’ve been paying particular attention to certain networks that might have government ties,” the youngest suit said. “There’s a Croatian gunrunner network we might infiltrate, the Ling smuggling family in Holland, the Barnhill network in Edinburgh…”
The young suit was on my side. I took that as a good sign. “The Feds were able to break the Mafia because it was a hierarchy—lower-level thugs could testify against the big guys. But the only weak links here are the common elements that move from network to network.” I tapped the Money Czar’s ugly face on the screen. “This guy is the glue between some very bad people. It goes beyond crime. It moves into threats not only to our allies, but to the United States. This man may represent our best hope of uncovering some of the biggest threats to Western security.”
“He doesn’t look that scary,” Brandon said, and everyone laughed. Except me. I was prepared to scare the hell out of them when I told them what I knew.
“So the question is how do we find this Money Czar and—” My phone beeped. When your wife is seven months pregnant, you get a free pass on taking calls in meetings.
“Sorry,” I mouthed to Brandon. “Pregnant wife,” I said to the suits. I stepped out into the hallway. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“Monkey?” Lucy said. “I need you to meet me outside.”
“Um, I’m in a meeting.”
“I need you to step outside. Now, Sam.” Then I heard it: an awful undercurrent in her words, like a shadow eddying under summer water.
I started to walk to the door. “Did you get a new phone?”
“I lost my old one this morning. Just bought a new one. It’s been a rotten morning.”
I heard the shaky tension in her voice. “You sick?”
“Please, just come outside.”
Bad news, then, to be delivered face-to-face. Not in the office, where emotion might be seen. A coldness gripped my heart. The Bundle. She had gone to the doctor. Something was wrong with the baby.
I hurried out of our offices; past John the guard, who had abandoned his cricket book for a British tabloid. Down the hallway. “Where are you?”
“Out on Holborn.”
“Are you okay?”
“No… just come find me outside. Please.”
I raced down the stairs, six flights, not waiting for the elevator. I came out into the lobby.
No sign of Lucy.
“Come out into the street,” she said. “Please, Sam. Please.”
“What’s the matter?” I headed out onto the busy street. It offered a steady stream of pedestrians—office workers, couriers, shoppers, the inevitable London tourists. Two young women leaned against the building in fashionable coats, smoking, sipping tea from plus-sized paper cups between gossipy laughs. I scanned the street. No Lucy. “Where are you?”
“Sam, now. Please. Run.”
I ran, even before Lucy said to, because it was all so wrong, I could feel it in every cell of my body. I headed under the covered scaffolding of the building next door, hurrying along the steady march of people. Finally I pushed past a man in a suit, past a woman in a hooded sweatshirt.
I stopped when I stepped back out of the temporary tunnel; there was no sign of Lucy, on the sidewalks, in the herky-jerk of London traffic. None. I turned, looked every way.