round up my old friends. Coldhearted nyekulturniy, every one, I shed no tear, but what did you really stop? Grigori Berman founded more companies than American entrepreneur Jim Clark!"
"Phony companies, Grigori. You invented companies that existed only on paper."
"Nowadays, these people move beyond that. Buy real companies. Insurance companies in Austria, banks in Russia, trucking companies in Chile. Cash goes in, cash comes out, who can say where and when? Who stops them? Your government? Your Treasury Department? Treasury Department has Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. In strip mall in Virginia suburb." Once again, Berman's bountiful stomach began to quiver. "They call it Toilet Seat Building. Who takes FinCEN seriously? You remember story of Sun Ming? Comes to America, says he's woodworker. Borrows hundred and sixty million dollars from Bank of China. Easy as sneezing! Print up handful of import contracts, agency approvals, bills of lading, export certificates, and presto-chango, import application authorized, so. Wire transfer authorized, so. Deposits his money in banks. Tells one banker, 'I play Hong Kong stock market.' Tells another banker, 'I sell cigarette filter.' Tells third banker, 'Textiles!' Zip, zip, zip. From China to America to Australia. Blending is everything. You blend into the ordinary commercial flux, so. So, grain of sand on beach. Americans never catch him. FinCEN charged with watching money, but nobody give FinCEN any money! Treasury secretary doesn't want to destabilize banking system! In your country, four hundred thousand wire transfers every day, in and out. Digital message from one bank computer to another. Americans never catch Sun Ming. Australians catch him."
"A smaller beach?"
"Better computers. Look for pattern within pattern. See something funny. So bag is out of cat."
"Funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?"
"There is difference?" Berman asked, his mouth closing around a spoon full of treacle tart. He gave a moan of gastronomic pleasure. "You know, last week I was in Canary Wharf Tower. Have you been? Fifty stories high. Tallest building in London. Practically bankrupted the Reichman brothers, but never mind, not Grigori's money. So I'm there, visiting Russian friend, Ludmilla, you'd like her, the pair of onion domes on this woman, they put Saint Basel's to shame. And we're forty-some floors up and I'm looking out window, bee-yoo-tiful view of this city, and suddenly guess what I see floating through air."
"A bank note?"
"Butterfly." Berman said it with grand finality. "Why butterfly? What butterfly doing forty stories high, middle of city? Most amazing thing, ever. No flowers forty stories high. Nothing for butterfly to do, up here in sky. All the same: butterfly." He raised a finger for emphasis.
"Thank you, Grigori. I knew I could count on you to make everything clear."
"Must always look for butterfly. In the middle of nothing, thing that does not belong. In cascade of digital transfer codes, you ask: is there butterfly? Yes. Always butterfly. Flap, flap, flap. So. You must know how to look."
"I see," Janson replied. "And will you help me look?"
Berman looked, downcast, at the ruins of his treacle tart and then brightened. "Join me for game snooker? I know place nearby."
"Nyet."
"Why not?"
"Because you cheat."
The Russian shrugged cheerily. "Makes for more interesting game, Grigori thinks. Snooker is game of skill. Cheating demands skill. Why is cheating cheating?" The logic was quintessential Berman. At Janson's withering gaze, the Russian held up his hands. "All right, all right. I bring you to my 'umble home, da? Have fancy IBM machine there. RS/6000 SP supercomputer. And we look for butterfly."
"We find butterfly," Janson said, gently but unmistakably applying pressure. Berman was living the high life in London, having amassed with his wits a fortune well beyond that of the criminal associates he began with. But none of this could have happened had Janson allowed him to be prosecuted all those years ago. He didn't have to tap the ledger; Berman knew precisely what the ledger contained. No one had a more finely calibrated sense of debt and credit than the ebullient ex-accountant.
Fort Meade, Maryland
Sanford Hildreth was running late, but when wasn't he? Danny Callahan had been his driver for the past three years, and the only thing that would have surprised him was if he had been on time.
Callahan was one of a small pool of men assigned to chauffeur the topmost intelligence officers of the United States. Each was subject to regular security checks, of the most stringent nature. Each was unmarried and childless, and had advanced training in combat as well as executive safety and diversionary tactics. The instructions were emphatic and explicit: Guard