wireless PDA and inserted the numbers that would give him an Internet connection to his bank in the Caymans. The signals would be two-way encoded, using a random string that would be generated by Janson's own electronic device and never used again. No message interception would be possible. The 1,024-bit encryption made the process slow, but within ten minutes, Janson had downloaded his latest account-activity records.
The account had, when he last checked it, contained $700,000.
Now it contained $16.7 million.
Yet how was that possible? The account was safeguarded against unauthorized deposits, just as it was against unauthorized withdrawals.
They want you to come in.
The words returned with a knife-sharp edge.
Over the next thirty minutes, Janson combed through a series of transfers that involved his own unique digital signature, a nonreplicable set of numbers entrusted only to him - a digital "private key" that even the bank had no access to. It was impossible. And yet the electronic record was irrefutable: Janson had himself authorized the receipt of sixteen million dollars. The money had arrived in two installments, of eight million each. Eight million had arrived four days ago. Eight million had arrived yesterday, at 7:21 p.m. EST.
Approximately a quarter of an hour after Peter Novak's death.
CHAPTER TEN
The air in the room seemed to grow heavy; the walls were closing in. Janson needed to regain his bearings, needed to get outside. The area surrounding Syntagma Square was a sprawl of kiosks and shops, growing posher in the vicinity of Syntagma Square proper. Even here, though, were the standard-bearers of globalization: a Wendy's, a McDonald's, an Arby's. Janson pushed on, making his way past the neoclassical facades of the nineteenth-century Ottoman buildings, now mostly given over to functions of state. He strode down Herod Atticus Street and then Vassilissis Sofias and paused before the Vouli, or what was now the Greek parliament, a vast, buff-colored structure, the windows relatively small, the portico long. Before it, evzone guards, with their bayoneted rifles and maroon-tasseled caps and kilts, preened. A series of bronze shields honored now forgotten victories.
He sought out the cooler, clearer air of the National Gardens, which the Vouli fronted. There, dingy white statues and small fishponds were tucked away among the bushes and trees. Bounding along the bowers and arbors were hundreds of feral cats, many with leathery, wrung-out nipples protruding from their underbellies. An odd thing: it was possible simply not to notice them. And yet, once you did, you saw them everywhere.
He nodded at a white-haired man on a park bench who seemed to be looking in his direction; the man averted his gaze just a little too quickly, it seemed, given the affability of most Greeks. No doubt it was Janson's nerves; he was jumping at shadows.
Now he circled back to the Omonia, a somewhat seedy neighborhood northwest of Syntagma, where he knew a man who maintained a very specialized business indeed. He walked swiftly down Stadiou, past shops and kapheneion. What first caught his attention was not a familiar face but simply a face that, once more, turned too quickly when he approached. Was Janson starting to imagine things? He replayed it in his mind. A casually dressed man apparently had been squinting at a street sign when Janson rounded the corner, then immediately turned his gaze to a shop. To Janson, it seemed that he did so a bit abruptly, like an observer knowing that it was bad form to be seen close-up by the subject of surveillance.
By now Janson had become hyperattentive to his environs. A block later, he noticed the woman across the street peering into the jewelry shop; but, again, something was off about it. The sun slanted fiercely at the plate glass, making it a better mirror than a window. If she were, in fact, trying to make out the necklaces and bracelets displayed in the window, she would have had to stand at the opposite angle, with her back to the sun, creating a shadow through which the window would be restored to transparency. Moments before, another shopper had held out a wide-brimmed hat to block the sun's slanting rays and see into the store. But what if your interest was only in what the glass was reflecting?
Janson's field instincts began signaling wildly. He was being watched: as he thought back on it, he should have picked up on the couple at the florist's counter opposite the hotel, ostentatiously looking at a large map that hid their faces. Incongruously large. Most tourists on