“I’ll bet you’re wondering the same thing,” the man said to Callahan companionably. “It’s called Anectine. A neuromuscular blocker. They use it during surgery. Sometimes people on respirators get it, too, to make sure they don’t thrash around. It’s a strange sensation, isn’t it? You’re fully conscious, but you can’t fucking move. Your diaphragm goes up and down, your heart pumps away, you can even blink. But your voluntary muscles are out of commission. Plus which, the way it’s metabolized, it’s damn hard to identify in forensics unless you already know what to look for.”
The man pressed the window controls, lowering both rear windows partway. Another squawk came from the intercom, and the man switched the sound off.
“Your passenger can’t figure out why we’d lower the windows when it’s raining like a mother,” the man said.
What the hell was going on?
Callahan focused all his mental energy on the task of lifting his index finger. He strained with all his might, as if he were bench-pressing three times his weight. The finger trembled ever so faintly, and that was all. He was helpless. Utterly helpless. He could see. He could hear. But he could not move.
They approached Memorial Bridge, which was almost empty of traffic, and the driver suddenly floored the accelerator. The powerful three-hundred-horse-power engine surged, and the car leaped forward, cutting a diagonal across two lanes of traffic on the bridge. The driver ignored the furious hammering against the opaque partition as the powerful armored vehicle crashed over the railing on the side of the bridge, sailing through the air and into the river.
The impact with the water was greater than Callahan had expected, and he found himself slammed forward against the straining belts. He felt something snap: probably one of his ribs had broken. But the armored car provided the driver’s seat with four-point belts, the sort used by racing drivers, and Callahan knew that for the man in the blue slicker, the force of impact would be safely distributed. As the car sank rapidly into the turbid depths of the Potomac, Callahan could see him release his own belts and roll his window down. Then he released Callahan’s belts, and dragged him over to the driver’s seat.
Callahan felt like a rag doll. Limp and helpless. But he could see. He could think. He knew why the rear widows had been left just slightly open.
Now the cop who was no cop turned off the engine and wriggled through the open window, shooting toward the surface.
Neither he nor Hildreth would have any such options—Callahan because he was paralyzed, and Hildreth because he was locked in the passenger’s compartment. The windows would be frozen in place: lowered just enough to speed the inflow of water. Hildreth’s ultra-secure conveyance had turned into a crypt.
The car was settling to the riverbed with its front end raised, probably because water had already filled the rear compartment, and now the water was pouring through the window and a dozen unseen vents to fill Callahan’s compartment. It was rising fast, to his chest, his neck, his chin. Higher.
He was breathing through his nose, now, but for how many seconds longer?
And then all his questions dissolved into another question: Who would want to do something like this?
The water seeped into his nose and into his mouth, and dribbled into his lungs, and blossoming within him was a powerful sensation, perhaps the most powerful sensation the human body can know, that of asphyxiation. He was drowning. He could not get air. He thought of his uncle Jimmy, dying of emphysema, sitting in a chair with oxygen flowing into his nostrils through those clear plastic nasal prongs, the tank of O2 accompanying him everywhere, the way his yellow Labrador once did. He fantasized kicking free with powerful thrusts, kicking himself to the river’s surface. Then he tried to imagine himself breathing good clean air, imagined jogging around the cinder track at his high school in West Lafayette, Indiana, though when he did, he found he was only inhaling water faster. Air spilled from his nose and mouth in a pulsing current of bubbles.
And the agony of breathlessness only increased.
The pressure on his eardrums—he was deep, deep—became excruciating, adding a foundation to the horrible sense of suffocation. It meant something, though. It meant he was not yet dead. Death was not painful. What he was feeling was life’s final blow, its farewell pangs, its desperate struggle not to leave.
He wanted to thrash, to flail, to lash out. In his mind, his hands began to churn the water: but only in his mind. His extremities twitched feebly, that was all.
He recalled what the man had said, and some things became all too obvious. Guard your passenger with your life: a nonissue now. When the car was dredged out, they would both be dead. Both drowned. One driver, stunned by the impact, drowned in his seat. One passenger the victim of security precautions. The only question would be why Callahan had driven over the bridge.
But it was wet, the pavement was slippery, and Callahan was given to pushing the speed limit, wasn’t he?
Oh, they’d blame the peon, all right.
So this was how it was to end. He thought of everything that had gone wrong with life. He thought about the athletic scholarship to State he didn’t get, because he was off his game the day the scout showed up to check out what West Lafayette High School had to offer. And then with his frickin’ knee injury, the coach wouldn’t give him any playing time in the regional and state championship games. He thought about the apartment he and Irene were going to buy, until it turned out they couldn’t scrape together the money they needed for the down payment, and his dad refused to help, steamed that they’d been counting on his chipping in without having consulted him, so they lost the earnest money, too, a loss they could hardly afford. He remembered how Irene left him soon after, and he could hardly blame her, though he sure did his best to. He remembered the jobs he’d applied for, the string of searing rejections. No-promotion material, that was what he’d been labeled, and try as he might, the label would never come off. Like the gummy backing of a bumper sticker you’d tried to scrub away, it was somehow just there. People took one look at him and they could see it.
Now Callahan lacked even the strength to sustain the fantasy of being elsewhere. He was … where he was.
He was cold, and wet, and breathless, and terrified, and consciousness itself was beginning to darken, to flicker, to narrow to a few essential thoughts.
He thought: Everybody has to die. But nobody should die like this.
He thought: It isn’t going to last much longer, it can’t last much longer, it can’t.
And he thought: Why?
Chapter Fifteen
Berthwick House—what the Russian had described as his humble abode—was in fact a grand redbrick Georgian mansion abutting Regent’s Park: a three-story pile with dormers in the slate roof and three chimneys. Security was both discreet and overt. It was surrounded by a ten-foot black wrought-iron fence, with rods that came to a sharp, spearlike end. A high-mounted video-camera in an enameled hood surveyed the driveway. There was a small gatehouse with a guard … who waved Berman’s raspberry-colored Bentley through with a respectful nod.
The spacious reception hall was painted coral and was crowded with antique reproductions. There were side chairs, highboys, and chess tables in the manner of Sheridan and Chippendale: but they were glossy with thick shellac and given an odd orange cast by antiquing stain. A pair of large hunting scenes in gilt frames looked, at first glance, like distinguished eighteenth-century canvases: up close, they looked as if they came from a department store—copies done by a hurried art student.
“You like?” Berman was puffed up with pride as he gestured around the jumble of Anglophilic knockoffs.
“I’m speechless,” Janson replied.
“Look like movie set, da?” Another expansive gesture.
“Da.”
“Is from movie set,” Berman said delightedly, clapping his hands. “Grigori arrive at Merchant Ivory production, last day shooting. Write check to unit production manager. Buy everything. Haul off to home. Now li
ve in Merchant Ivory set. Everyone say, Merchant Ivory do English upper class best. Best is good enough for Grigori Berman.” A contented chuckle.
“From Grigori Berman, I’d expect no less.” The explanation made sense: everything was off, exaggerated, because it was designed only to film well with the proper lights, lenses, and filters.
“Have butler, too. Me, Grigori Berman, poor Muscovite, spend childhood in line at government department store GUM, have butler.”
The man he referred to was standing quietly at the end of the foyer, dressed in a black four-button long coat and a stiff pique shirt. He was barrel-chested and strapping, with a full beard, and thinning, neatly combed-back hair. His pink cheeks lent an air of joviality at odds with his somber demeanor.
“This is Mr. Giles French,” Berman said. “The ‘gentleman’s gentleman.’ Mr. French take care of all your needs.”
“That’s really his name?”
“No, not real name. Real name Tony Thwaite. Who cares? I not like real name. Give him name from best American television program.”
The bewhiskered manservant gave a solemn nod. “At your service,” he said plummily.
“Mr. French,” Berman said, “bring us tea. And …” He paused, either lost in thought or furiously trying to remember what might accompany tea. “Sevruga?” He sounded tentative, and the request prompted an almost imperceptibly subtle head shake from the butler. “No, wait,” Berman corrected himself. Once more, he brightened : “Cucumber sandwiches.”
“Very good, sir,” said the butler.
“Better idea. Bring scones. Those special scones cook makes. With clotted cream and strawberry jam.”
“Excellent, sir. Right away, sir.”
Berman beamed, a child able to play with an action figure he’d been pining for. For him, Berthwick was a toy house, in which he’d created a bizarre parody of upscale English living, all in lavishly, lovably bad taste.
“Tell me, really, what you think?” Berman said, gesturing around him.
“It’s unspeakable.”
“Beyond words, you think?” Berman pinched his cheek. “You not just saying that? Sweet pea! For that I should introduce you to Ludmilla. She show you international travel without leaving bed.”
Passing by a small room off the main hallway, Janson paused before a large, gleaming, powerful-looking machine with a built-in video monitor and keyboard and two black-grilled squares to either side. He nodded toward it respectfully. “That the RS/6000?”
“That? Is karaoke machine. Computer system in basement.” Berman took him down a curved flight of stairs, to a carpeted room that contained several computer workstations; the heat they threw off made the windowless room uncomfortably warm. Two small electric fans stirred the air. The butler arrived with tea and scones, arrayed on Bristol delft plates. He laid them out on a small corner table, along with small ceramic pots filled with clotted cream and jam. Then he glided off.
After glancing longingly at the scones, Berman sat down at a keyboard and started to activate a series of firewall-penetration programs. He studied the results for a few minutes and then turned to Janson. “In cone of silence, tell Grigori what you get me into.”
Janson was silent for a while, thinking long and hard before he disclosed the essential elements of his predicament. Garrulous creatures like Berman, he knew, could sometimes be the most discreet of all, depending on the structure of motivation. Grigori listened without comment or any evident reaction, and then, shrugging, typed the values of an algebraic matrix into the program he was running.
Another minute passed. He turned to Janson. “Grigori not encouraged. We let these programs run, then maybe get results in time.”
“How much time?”
“Run machine twenty-four hours, coordinate with global parallel-processing network of other computers, then maybe …” Berman looked off. “Eight months? No, I think closer nine months. Like make baby.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You want Grigori to do what others can’t do? Must supply Grigori with numbers others don’t have. You have public-key sequence to account, da? We use this, we have special advantage. Otherwise, back to making baby—nine months.”
Reluctantly, Janson supplied him with the public-key sequence for his bank account—the codes that the bank transmitted upon receipt of information. The public-key sequence was known to both the bank and the account holder.
Within ten seconds after he typed in the public-key sequence, Berman’s screen filled with jumbled digits, scrolling down his monitor like the closing credits of a film. “Numbers meaningless,” he said. “Now we must do pattern recognition. Look for butterfly.”
“Find butterfly,” Janson stressed.
“Pah!” Berman said. “You, moy droog, are like baked Alaska: sweet and soft outside, hard and cold inside. Brrr! Brrr!” He clasped his arms around, pantomiming an arctic chill. But for the next five minutes, Berman studied sequences of confirmation codes with an intensity that shut out everything else.
At last, he read a series of digits out loud. “Butterfly here—5467-001-0087. That is butterfly.”
“The numbers mean nothing to me.”
“Same numbers mean everything to me,” said Berman. “Numbers say beautiful blond women and filthy canals and brown café where you smoke hashish and then more women, from Eastern Europe, sitting in storefront window like mannequin wearing pasties.”
Janson blinked. “Amsterdam. You’re saying you’re looking at a transfer code from Amsterdam.”
“Da!” Berman said. “Amsterdam transfer code—it cycles through too many times to be accident. Your fairy godmother uses an Amsterdam bank.”
“Can you tell which one?”
“Baked Alaska is what you are,” Berman said reprovingly. “Give him inch, he take isle! Impossible to get specific account unless … Nyet, impossible.”
“Unless what?”
“Private key?” Berman cringed as if he expected to be slapped for even saying those words. “Use digits like sardine key, scroll open can. Twist, twist, twist. Very powerful.” Moving funds in or out of the account required a private key, an authorizing sequence of digits known only to the account holder; the key would not appear in any transmission. This separate, ultra-secure digital pathway protected both the customer and the bank.
“You really expect me to entrust you with the private-key sequence?”
“Nyet,” he said, shrugging.
“Can I trust you with it?”
A booming laugh. “Nyet! What do you take me for! Girl Scout? Private key must be kept private, from everyone. Hence name. All men mortal. Grigori more mortal than most.” He looked up at Janson. “Please, keep key to self.” It was an entreaty.
Janson was silent for a while. Berman liked to say he could resist everything except temptation. To provide him with the private key would present him with a tremendous temptation indeed: he could siphon off its contents with a few keystrokes. Yet at what cost? Berman loved his life here; he knew that to make an enemy of Janson would jeopardize everything he had, and was. No threats were necessary to underscore the risks. Didn’t this explain the real source of his reluctance ? He didn’t want the key because he knew he could not allow himself to give in to temptation—and wanted to avoid the anguish of waking up the next day and knowing he had left a sizable pile of money on the table.
Now Janson recited a fifteen-digit string and watched Berman type the sequence. The Russian’s face was sickly and tense; he was obviously wrestling with himself. Within moments, however, he had succeeded in establishing connections to dozens of financial institutions, burrowing from within the Bank of Mont Verde mainframe to retrieve the digital signatures that uniquely identified the counterparty to every transaction.
Several minutes elapsed, the silence disturbed only by the soft clicking of keys and the quiet drone of the fans. Then Berman stood up. “Da!” he said. “ING. Which stands for International Netherlands Group Bank. Which you perhaps once
knew as Nederlandsche Middenstandsbank.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“Beautiful new central office in Amsterdam. So energy-efficient, nobody can bear to work there. Second-largest bank in country. And Amsterdam women—the most beautiful women in the whole world.”
“Grigori,” Janson began.
“You must meet Gretchen. Play around-the-world with Gretchen, I guarantee you’ll rack up frequent flier miles on your back. Or hers. Gretchen is friend of Grigori. Friend of all weary travelers. Out calls only, but very reasonable prices. You tell her you are friend of Grigori. I give you her number. Easier to remember than wire transfer codes to ING. Ha!”
“I’m not convinced we’ve hit a wall here. If you can identify the bank, can’t you narrow it even further?”
“Very difficult,” said Grigori, biting cautiously into his scone, as if it might bite back. In a tone of troubled confession, he said, “Cook not really make scones. Cook say she makes scones. I know she buy pre-made from Sainsbury’s. One day I saw plastic shrink-wrap in the bin, so, so. So bag is out of cat. I not say anything. Everyone must feel they have victory, or nobody happy.”
“Let’s focus on making me happy. You said getting account info would be difficult. ‘Difficult’ doesn’t mean impossible. Or is there somebody else you’d recommend for the job?”
His bearlike host looked injured. “Nothing impossible for Grigori Berman.” He glanced warily around him, then spooned a generous amount of strawberry jam into his cup of tea and stirred. “Must not let butler see,” he said in a low voice. “This Russian way. Mr. French would not understand. It would shock him.”
Janson rolled his eyes. Poor Grigori Berman: a prisoner of his household staff. “I’m running out of time, I’m afraid,” he said.
With a hangdog look, Berman stood and padded heavily back to the RS/6000 workstation. “This very boring,” he said, like an overgrown child dragged away from his toys and forced to work on his multiplication tables. Meanwhile, Janson established a direct connection with the Bank of Mont Verde via his triband PDA.