And working inside the system just didn’t work.
So, to accomplish anything, you just had to be outside the system.
Way the hell outside the system.
And if anybody noticed, well, he was already disgraced anyway, wasn’t he?
He spent his first hour discussing financial matters with some of his staff, because that was how Hendley Associates made its money. As a commodities trader, and as a currency arbitrageur, he’d been ahead of the curve almost from the beginning, sensing the momentary valuation differences—he always called them “Deltas”—which were generated by psychological factors, by perceptions that might or might not turn out to be real.
He did all his business anonymously through foreign banks, all of which liked having large cash accounts, and none of which were overly fastidious about where the money came from, so long as it was not overtly dirty, which his certainly was not. It was just another way of keeping outside the system.
Not that every one of his dealings was strictly legal. Having Fort Meade’s intercepts on his side made the game a lot easier. In fact, it was illegal as hell, and not the least bit ethical. But in truth Hendley Associates did little in the way of damage on the world stage. It could have been otherwise, but Hendley Associates operated on the principle that pigs got fed and hogs got slaughtered, and so they ate only a little out of the international trough. And, besides, there was no real governing authority for crimes of this type and this magnitude. And tucked away in a safe within the company vault was an official Charter signed by the former President of the United States.
Tom Davis came in. The titulary head of bond trading, Davis’s background was similar in some ways to Hendley’s, and he spent his days glued to his computer. He didn’t worry about security. In this building all of the walls had metal sheathing to contain electronic emanations, and all of the computers were tempest-protected.
“What’s new?” asked Hendley.
“Well,” Davis answered, “we have a couple of potential new recruits.”
“Who might they be?”
Davis slid the files across Hendley’s desk. The CEO took them and opened both.
“Brothers?”
“Twins. Fraternals. Their mom must have punched out two eggs instead of one that month. Both of them impressed the right people. Brains, mental agility, fitness, and between them a good mix of talents, plus language skills. Spanish, especially.”
“This one speaks Pashtu?” Hendley looked up in surprise.
“Just enough to find the bathroom. He was in country eight weeks or so, took the time to learn the local patois. Acquitted himself pretty well, the report says.”
“Think they’re our kind of people?” Hendley asked. Such people did not walk in the front door, which was why Hendley had a small number of very discreet recruiters sprinkled throughout the government.
“We need to check them out a little more,” Davis conceded, “but they do have the talents we like. On the surface, both appear to be reliable, stable, and smart enough to understand why we’re here. So, yeah, I think they’re worth a serious look.”
“What’s next for them?”
“Dominic is going to transfer to Washington. Gus Werner wants him to join the counterterror office. He’ll probably be a desk man to start with. He’s a little young for HRT, and he hasn’t proven his analytical abilities yet. I think Werner wants to see how smart he is first. Brian will fly to Camp Lejeune, back to working with his company. I’m surprised the Corps hasn’t seconded him to intelligence. He’s an obvious candidate, but they do like their shooters, and he did pretty well over in camel-land. He’ll be fast-tracked to major’s rank, if my sources are correct. So, first, I think I’ll fly down and have lunch with him, feel him out some, then come back to D.C. And do the same with Dominic. Werner was impressed with him.”
“And Gus is a good judge of men,” the former senator noted.
“That he is, Gerry,” Davis agreed. “So—anything new shaking?”
“Fort Meade is buried under a mountain, as usual.” The NSA’s biggest problem was that they intercepted so much raw material it would take an army to sort through it all. Computer programs helped by homing in on key words and such, but nearly all of it was innocent chatter. Programmers were always trying to improve the catcher program, but it had proven to be virtually impossible to give a computer human instincts, though they were still trying. Unfortunately, the really talented programmers worked for game companies. That was where the money was, and talent usually followed the money path. Hendley couldn’t complain about that. After all, he’d spent his twenties and half of his thirties doing the same. So, he often went looking for rich and very successful programmers for whom the money chase had become not so much boring as redundant. It was usually a waste of time. Nerds were often greedy bastards. Just like lawyers, but not quite as cynical. “I’ve seen half a dozen interesting intercepts today, though . . .”
“Such as?” Davis asked. The company’s chief recruiter, he was also a skilled analyst.
“This.” Hendley handed the folder across. Davis opened it and scanned down the page.
“Hmm,” was all he said.
“Could be scary, if it turns into anything,” Hendley thought aloud.
“True. But we need more.” That was not earthshaking. They always needed more.
“Who do we have down there right now?” He ought to have known, but Hendley suffered from the usual bureaucratic disease: He had trouble keeping all the information current in his head.
“Right now? Ed Castilanno is in Bogotá, looking into the Cartel, but he’s in deep cover. Real deep,” Davis reminded his boss.
“You know, Tom, this intelligence business sometimes sucks the big one.”
“Cheer up, Gerry. The pay’s a hell of a lot better—at least for us underlings,” he added with a tiny grin. His bronze skin contrasted starkly with the ivory teeth.
“Yeah, must be terrible to be a peasant.”
“At least da massa let me get educated, learn my letters and such. Could have been worse, don’ have to chop cotton no more, Mas Gerry.” Hendley rolled his eyes. Davis had, in fact, gotten his degree from Dartmouth, where he took a lot less grief for his dark skin than for his home state. His father grew corn in Nebraska, and voted Republican.
“What’s one of those harvesters cost now?” the boss asked.
“You kidding? Far side of two hundred thousand. Dad got a new one last year and he’s still bitching about it. ’Course, this one’ll last until his grandchildren die rich. Cuts through an acre of corn like a battalion of Rangers going through some bad guys.” Davis had made a good career in CIA as a field spook, becoming a specialist in tracking money across international borders. At Hendley Associates he’d discovered that his talents were also quite useful in a business sense, but, of course, he’d never lost his nose for the real action. “You know, this FBI guy, Dominic, he did some interesting work in financial crimes in his first field assignment in Newark. One of his cases is developing into a major investigation into an international banking house. He knows how to sniff things out pretty well for a rookie.”
“All that, and he can kill people on his own hook,” Hendley agreed.
“That’s why I like his looks, Gerry. He can make decisions in the saddle, like a guy ten years older.”
“Brother act. Interesting,” Hendley observed, eyes on the folders again.
“Maybe breeding tells. Grandfather was a homicide cop, after all.”
“And before that in the 101st Airborne. I see your point, Tom. Okay. Sound them both out soon. We’re going to be busy soon.”
“Think so?”
“It’s not getting any better out there.” Hendley waved at the window.
THEY WERE at a sidewalk café in Vienna. The nights were turning less cold, and the patrons of the establishment were enduring the chill to enjoy a meal on the wide sidewalk.
“So, what is your interest with us?” Pablo asked.
br /> “There is a confluence of interests between us,” Mohammed answered, then clarified: “We share enemies.”
He gazed off. The women passing by were dressed in the formal, almost severe local fashion, and the traffic noise, especially the electric trams, made it impossible for anyone to listen in on their conversation. To the casual, or even the professional, observer, these were simply two men from other countries—and there were a lot of them in this imperial city—talking business in a quiet and amiable fashion. They were speaking in English, which was also not unusual.
“Yes, that is the truth,” Pablo had to agree. “The enemies part, that is. What of the interests?”
“You have assets for which we have use. We have assets for which you have use,” the Muslim explained patiently.
“I see.” Pablo added cream to his coffee and stirred. To his surprise, the coffee here was as good as in his own country.
He’d be slow to reach an agreement, Mohammed expected. His guest was not as senior as he would have preferred. But the enemy they shared had enjoyed greater success against Pablo’s organization than his own. It continued to surprise him. They had ample reason to employ effective security measures, but as with all monetarily motivated people they lacked the purity of purpose that his own colleagues exercised. And from that fact came their higher vulnerability. But Mohammed was not so foolish as to assume that made them his inferiors. Killing one Israeli spy didn’t make him Superman, after all. Clearly they had ample expertise. It just had limits. As his own people had limits. As everyone but Allah Himself had limits. In that knowledge came more realistic expectations, and gentler disappointments when things went badly. One could not allow emotions to get in the way of “business,” as his guest would have misidentified his Holy Cause. But he was dealing with an unbeliever, and allowances had to be made.
“What can you offer us?” Pablo asked, displaying his greed, much as Mohammed had expected.
“You need to establish a reliable network in Europe, correct?”
“Yes, we do.” They’d had a little trouble of late. European police agencies were not as restrained as the American sort.
“We have such a network.” And since Muslims were not thought to be active in the drug trade—drug dealers often lost their heads in Saudi Arabia, for example—so much the better.
“In return for what?”
“You have a highly successful network in America, and you have reason to dislike America, do you not?”
“That is so,” Pablo agreed. Colombia was starting to make progress with the Cartel’s uneasy ideological allies in the mountains of Pablo’s home country. Sooner or later, the FARC would cave in to the pressure and then, doubtless, turn on their “friends”—really “associates” was a loose enough word—as their price of admission to the democratic process. At that time, the security of the Cartel might be seriously threatened. Political instability was their best friend in South America, but that might not last forever. The same was true of his host, Pablo considered, and that did make them allies of convenience. “Precisely what services would you require of us?”
Mohammed told him. He didn’t add that no money would be exchanged for the Cartel’s service. The first shipment that Mohammed’s people shepherded into—Greece? Yes, that would probably be the easiest—would be sufficient to seal the venture, wouldn’t it?
“That is all?”
“My friend, more than anything else we trade in ideas, not physical objects. The few material items we need are quite compact, and can be obtained locally if necessary. And I have no doubt that you can help with travel documents.”
Pablo nearly choked on his coffee. “Yes, that is easily done.”
“So, is there any reason why this alliance cannot be struck?”
“I must discuss it with my superiors,” Pablo cautioned, “but on the surface I see no reason why our interests should be in conflict.”
“Excellent. How may we communicate further?”
“My boss prefers to meet those with whom he does business.”
Mohammed thought that over. Travel made him and his associates nervous, but there was no avoiding it. And he did have enough passports to see him through the airports of the world. And he also had the necessary language skills. His education at Cambridge had not been wasted. He could thank his parents for that. And he blessed his English mother for her gift of complexion and blue eyes. Truly he could pass for a native of any country outside of China and Africa. The remains of a Cambridge accent didn’t hurt, either.
“You need merely tell me the time and the place,” Mohammed replied. He handed over his business card. It had his e-mail address, the most useful tool for covert communications ever invented. And with the miracle of modern air travel, he could be anywhere on the globe in forty-eight hours.
CHAPTER 2
JOINING UP
HE CAME in at a quarter to five. Anyone who passed him on the street would not have given him a second look, though he might have caught the eye of the odd unattached female. At six-one, a hundred eighty or so pounds—he worked out regularly—black hair and blue eyes, he wasn’t exactly movie star material, but neither was he the sort of man that a pretty young female professional would have summarily kicked out of bed.
He also dressed well, Gerry Hendley saw. Blue suit with a red pinstripe—it looked English-made—vest, red-and-yellow-striped tie, nice gold tie bar. Fashionable shirt. Decent haircut. The confident look that came from having both money and a good education to go with a youth that would not be misspent. His car was parked in the visitors’ lot in front of the building. A yellow Hummer 2 SUV, the sort of vehicle favored by people who herded cattle in Wyoming, or money in New York. And, probably, that was why . . .
“So, what brings you here?” Gerry asked, waving his guest to a comfortable seat on the other side of his mahogany desk.
“I haven’t decided what I want to do yet, just sort of bumping around, looking for a niche I might fit into.”
Hendley smiled. “Yeah, I’m not so old that I can’t remember how confusing it is when you get out of school. Which one did you go to?”
“Georgetown. Family tradition.” The boy smiled gently. That was one good thing about him that Hendley saw and appreciated—he wasn’t trying to impress anyone with his name and family background. He might even be a little uneasy with it, wanting to make his own way and his own name, as a lot of young men did. The smart ones, anyway. It was a pity that there was no place for him on The Campus.
“Your dad really likes Jesuit schools.”
“Even Mom converted. Sally didn’t go to Bennington. She got through her premed up at Fordham in New York. Hopkins Med now, of course. Wants to be a doc, like Mom. What the hell, it’s an honorable profession.”
“Unlike law?” Gerry asked.
“You know how Dad is about that,” the boy pointed out with a grin. “What was your undergraduate degree in?” he asked Hendley, knowing the answer already, of course.
“Economics and mathematics. I took a double major.” It had been very useful indeed for modeling trading patterns in commodities markets. “So, how’s your family doing?”
“Oh, fine. Dad’s back writing again—his memoirs. Mostly he bitches that he isn’t old enough to do that sort of book, but he’s working pretty hard to get it done right. He’s not real keen on the new President.”
“Yeah, Kealty has a real talent for bouncing back. When they finally bury the guy, they’d better park a truck on top of his headstone.” That joke had even made the Washington Post.
“I’ve heard that one. Dad says it can only take one idiot to unmake the work of ten geniuses.” That adage had not made the Washington Post. But it was the reason the young man’s father had set up The Campus, though the young man himself didn’t know it.
“That’s overstating things. This new guy only happened by accident.”
“Yeah, well, when it comes time to execute that klukker retard down in Mississippi, how much you wan
t to bet he commutes the sentence?”
“Opposition to capital punishment is a matter of principle to him,” Hendley pointed out. “Or so he says. Some people do feel that way, and it is an honorable opinion.”
“Principle? To him that’s the nice old lady who runs a grammar school.”
“If you want to have a political discussion, there’s a nice bar and grill a mile down Route 29,” Gerry suggested.
“No, that’s not it. Sorry for the digression, sir.”
This boy is holding his cards pretty close, Hendley thought. “Well, it’s not a bad subject for one. So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m curious.”
“About what?” the former senator asked.
“What you do here,” his visitor said.
“Mainly currency arbitrage.” Hendley stretched to show his weary relaxation at the end of a working day.
“Uh-huh,” the kid said, just a slight bit dubiously.
“There’s really money to be made there, if you have good information, and if you have the nerves to act on it.”
“You know, Dad likes you a lot. He says it’s a shame you and he don’t see each other anymore.”
Hendley nodded. “Yeah, and that’s my fault, not his.”
“He also said you were too smart to fuck up the way you did.”
Ordinarily, it would have been a positively seismic faux pas, but it was obvious from looking in the boy’s eyes that he hadn’t meant it as any sort of insult but rather as a question . . . or was it? Hendley suddenly asked himself.
“It was a bad time for me,” Gerry reminded his guest. “And anybody can make a mistake. Your dad even made a few himself.”
“That’s true. But Dad was lucky to have Arnie around to cover his ass.” That left his host an opening, which he jumped at.
“How’s Arnie doing?” Hendley asked, making the dodge to maneuver for time, still wondering why the kid was here, and actually starting to get a little uneasy about it, though he was not sure why he should feel that way.