The Broker

"I think it’s cancer. I didn’t ask a lot of questions."

"Perhaps you should ask more questions."

"Perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about certain things-her age and her dying husband."

"Where’d you find her?"

"It wasn’t easy. Language tutors are not exactly lined up like taxi drivers. A friend recommended her. I asked around. She has a good reputation in the city. And she’s available. It’s almost impossible to find a tutor willing to spend three hours every day with a student."

"Every day?"

"Most weekdays. She agreed to work every afternoon for the next month or so. It’s the slow season for guides. She might have a job once or twice a week, but she’ll try to be on call. Relax, she’s good."

"What’s her fee?"

"Two hundred euros a week, until spring when tourism picks up."

Whitaker rolled his eyes as if the money would come directly from his salary. "Marco’s costing too much," he said, almost to himself.

"Marco has a great idea. He wants to go to Australia or New Zealand or someplace where the language won’t be a problem."

"He wants a transfer?"

"Yes, and I think it’s a great idea. Let’s dump him on someone else."

"That’s not our decision, is it, Luigi?" 1 guess not.

The salads arrived and they were quiet for a moment. Then Whitaker said, "I still don’t like this woman. Keep looking for someone else."

"There is no one else. What are you afraid of?"

"Marco has a history with women, okay? There’s always the potential for romance. She could complicate things."

"I’ve warned her. And she needs the money."

"She’s broke?"

"I get the impression things are very tight. It’s the slow season, and her husband is not working."

Whitaker almost smiled, as if this was good news. He stuffed a large wedge of tomato in his mouth and chomped on it while peering around the trattoria to see if anyone was eavesdropping on their hushed conversation in English. When he was finally able to swallow, he said, "Let’s talk about e-mail. Marco was never much of a hacker. Back in his glory days he lived on the phone-had four or five of them in his office, two in his car, one in his pocket-always juggling three conversations at once. He bragged about charging five thousand bucks just to take a phone call from a new client, that sort of crap. Never used the computer. Those who worked for him have said that he occasionally read e-mails. He rarely sent them, and when he did it was always through a secretary. His office was high-tech, but he hired people to do the grunt work. He was too much of a big shot."

"What about prison?"

"No evidence of e-mail. He had a laptop which he used only for letters, never e-mail. It looks as though everyone abandoned him when he took the fall. He wrote occasionally to his mother and his son, but always used regular mail."

"Sounds completely illiterate."

"Sounds like it, but Langley’s concerned that he might try and contact someone on the outside. He can’t do it by phone, at least not now. He has no address he can use, so mail is probably out of the question."

"He’d be stupid to mail a letter," Luigi said. "It might divulge his whereabouts."

"Exactly. Same for the phone, fax, everything but email."

"We can track email."

"Most of it, but there are ways around it."

"He has no computer and no money to buy one."

"I know, but, hypothetically, he could sneak into an Internet cafe, use a coded account, send the e-mail, then clean his trail, pay a small fee for the rental, and walk away."

"Sure, but who’s gonna teach him how to do that?"

"He can learn. He can find a book. It’s unlikely, but there’s always a chance."

"I’m sweeping his apartment every day," Luigi said. "Every inch of it. If he buys a book or lays down a receipt, I’ll know it."

"Scope out the Internet cafes in the neighborhood. There are several of them in Bologna now."

"I know them."

"Where’s Marco right now?"

"I don’t know. It’s Saturday, a day off. He’s probably roaming the streets of Bologna, enjoying his freedom." "And he’s still scared?" "He’s terrified."

Mrs. Ruby Ausberry took a mild sedative and slept for six of the eight hours it took to fly from Milano to Dulles International. The lukewarm coffee they served before landing did little to clear the cobwebs, and as the 747 taxied to the gate she dozed off again. She forgot about the birthday card as they were herded onto the cattle cars on the tarmac and driven to the main terminal. She forgot about it as she waited with the mob to claim her baggage and plod through customs. And she forgot about it when she saw her beloved granddaughter waiting for her at the arrival exit.

She forgot about it until she was safely at home in York, Pennsylvania, and shuffling through her shoulder bag for a souvenir. "Oh my," she said as the card fell onto the kitchen table. "I was supposed to drop this off at the airport." Then she told her granddaughter the story of the poor guy in the Milan airport who’d just lost his passport and would miss his father’s ninetieth birthday.

Her granddaughter looked at the envelope. "Doesn’t look like a birthday card," she said. She studied the address: R. N. Backman, Attorney at Law, 412 Main Street, Culpeper, Virginia, 22701.

"There’s no return address," the granddaughter said.

"I’ll mail it first thing in the morning," Mrs. Ausberry said. "I hope it arrives before the birthday."

At ten Monday morning in Singapore, the mysterious $3 mil lion sitting in the account of Old Stone Group, Ltd, made an electronic exit and began a quiet journey to the other side of the world. Nine hours later, when the doors of the Galleon Bank and Trust opened on the Caribbean island of Saint Christopher, the money arrived promptly and was deposited in a numbered account with no name. Normally it would have been a completely anonymous transaction, one of several thousand that Monday morning, but Old Stone now had the full attention of the FBI. The bank in Singapore was cooperating fully. The bank on Saint Christopher was not, though it would soon get the opportunity to participate.

When Director Anthony Price arrived in his office at the Hoover Building before dawn on Monday, the hot memo was waiting. He canceled everything planned for that morning. He huddled with his team and waited for the money to land on Saint Christopher.

Then he called the vice president.

It took four hours of undiplomatic arm-breaking to shake the information loose on Saint Christopher. At first the bankers refused to budge, but what small quasi-nation can withstand the full might and fury of the world’s only superpower? When the vice president threat ened the prime minister with economic and banking sanctions that would destroy what little economy the island was clinging to, he finally knuckled under and turned on his bankers.

The numbered account could be directly traced to Artie Morgan, the thirty-one-year-old son of the former president. He’d been in and out of the Oval Office during the final hours of his father’s administration, sipping Heinekens and occasionally dispensing advice to both Critz and the President.

The scandal was ripening by the hour.

From Grand Cayman to Singapore and now to Saint Christopher, the wiring bore the telltale signs of an amateur trying to cover his tracks. A professional would’ve split the money eight ways and parked it in several different banks in different countries, and the wires would’ve been months apart. But even a rookie like Artie should’ve been able to hide the cash. The offshore banks he selected were secretive enough to protect him. The break for the feds had been the mutual-fund crook desperate to avoid prison.