Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

“And?”

“And before he was able to spill, he died.”

“One of the Agency’s overzealous interrogators, I take it.”

“No. They were able to infiltrate the system, get to him, take him out. Their reach is impressive.”

“And who are they ?”

“A person or persons,” he said slowly, ominously, “ within CIA.”

“Do you have names?”

“That’s the thing. They’re very well insulated. Faceless. Ben, this group inside Langley — it’s a group long rumored about. Have you heard of the Wise Men?”

“Yesterday you mentioned some sort of council of elders,” I said. “But who are they? What are they after?”

“We don’t know. Too well cloaked, behind a series of fronts.”

“And you’re saying that these... ‘Wise Men’... were behind Hal’s murder?”

“Speculation,” he replied. “It’s possible that Hal was one of them.”

I felt a little vertiginous. Hal, it appeared, had been killed by someone trained by the East German secret service, Stasi. Now Truslow was talking about a Romanian. How did the pieces fit? What was he implying?

“But you must know something about their identities,” I prompted.

“We know only that they’ve managed to siphon off tens of millions of dollars from various Agency accounts. All done in a highly sophisticated manner. And it appears that Harrison Sinclair pocketed some 12.5 million of it.”

“But you don’t seriously believe that. You know how modestly Hal lived.”

“Listen, Ben. I don’t want to believe that Hal Sinclair embezzled a cent either.”

“You don’t want to believe it? What the hell are you saying?”

Instead of replying, Truslow handed me a manila file folder. Its label bore an Agency filing designation: Gamma One, which was a higher level of classification than I’d ever before been privy to.

Inside was an assortment of photocopies of checks, computer printouts, blurry photographs. In one photo, a man wearing a Panama hat was standing in some kind of lobby.

It was unquestionably Hal Sinclair.

“What’s all this?” I asked, although I already knew.

“Hal at a bank in Grand Cayman, evidently waiting for an appointment with the bank’s manager. The other shots are of Hal at a variety of banks in Liechtenstein, Belize, and Anguilla.”

“Proving nothing—”

“Ben, listen to me. I was one of Hal’s closest friends. This knocked me out, too. There were several days during which Hal was missing — sick, allegedly, or taking a brief vacation. And was unreachable, or he’d arrange it so that he called in to the office. Evidently that’s when he’d make the deposits. They’ve got records of trips he made using several false passports.”

“This is bullshit , Alex!”

He sighed; this obviously distressed him. “That’s his signature on the registration papers for an Anstalt , a nonshare, limited-liability ‘letter box’ corporation based in Liechtenstein. The true owner’s identity, as you’ll see there, is Harrison Sinclair. And we’ve got copies there of intercepted wire transfers of funds to Bermuda trust accounts. Liberian-owned, of course. Telephone records, telexes, wire transfer authorizations. A real maze, Ben. Layers upon layers, shells inside shells. It’s proof, pure and simple, and it breaks my heart. But there it is.”

I didn’t know what to make of it all; from everything I could tell, they had the goods. But it made no sense. My late father-in-law a con artist, an embezzler? You had to know him as I did to realize how hard that was to accept. Yet there’s always that tiny seed of doubt. We never really know another person.

“The key lies in Sinclair’s meeting in Zurich with Orlov,” he continued. “Think: What does Zurich say to you?”

“Gnomes.”

“Hmm?”

“The gnomes of Zurich.” The phrase, I believe, was coined by a British journalist in the early sixties, referring to Swiss bankers, who are so helpful and discreet with mafiosi and drug “kingpins,” as they’re called.

“Ah, yes. Precisely. It’s a safe guess that when he and Orlov met in Zurich, they were transacting something. It was no social call.” He added musingly: “The head of the CIA and the last-ever head of the KGB.”

“Circumstantial,” I said.

“Perhaps. I hope to God there’s an explanation for all this. I believe there may well be. So you understand, I hope, why I want you to clear his name. The Agency has hired me to locate an enormous sum of missing money — a fortune that will make the 12.5 million that Hal allegedly embezzled seem paltry. I need your help. We can kill two birds with one stone: we can at once find the money and establish Hal’s innocence. Can I count on you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you can.”

“It’s maximum-clearance stuff, Ben, you understand that. You’ll have to go through the usual rigmarole, the polygraph, the vetting, and so on. Before you leave tonight, I’m going to give you a scrambler for your office phone which is compatible with the scrambler on my personal phone at work. But I must be honest: there are many people who will seek to hinder your work.”

“I understand,” I said. The truth was, I didn’t understand, or didn’t understand fully, and certainly I had no idea what precisely he had in mind until the next morning.

I remember the events of the next morning with an eerie clarity.

The offices of Truslow Associates, Inc., occupied all four floors of a narrow old brick town house on Beacon Street (a short walk, I realized, from where Truslow lived on Louisburg Square). A brass plaque on the ornate front door announced: TRUSLOW ASSOCIATES, INC., with no explanation; if you had to ask, you weren’t supposed to know.

The office was pleasantly upscale. You had to buzz to enter a small antechamber, where a well-coiffed receptionist checked you over, and then you were buzzed through to a sedate waiting room, quietly elegant and very expensively furnished. I waited for ten minutes or so, sunken in a comfortable black leather chair and browsing through Vanity Fair. The choice of magazines was that or Art and Antiques or Country Life : anything but business magazines, for heaven’s sake. No unsightly copies of Barron’s lying around here.

At exactly ten minutes past the scheduled appointment time, Truslow’s secretary emerged from whatever more important business was detaining her (coffee and danish, I guessed) and escorted me up a set of creaky, carpeted stairs to Truslow’s office. She was a classic executive administrative assistant, mid-thirties, pretty, and efficient, in a Chanel suit and belt and a power Chanel gold necklace. She introduced herself as Donna and asked if I wanted some Evian water, coffee, or freshly squeezed orange juice. I asked for a cup of coffee.

Alexander Truslow rose from behind his desk as I entered. The light in his office was so bright that I wished I’d brought sunglasses. It flooded in through the tall windows and bounced off the antique white walls.

Seated in a leather chair beside Truslow’s desk was a round-shouldered, dark-haired, bulky man in his early fifties.

“Ben,” Truslow said, “I’d like you to meet Charles Rossi.”

Rossi rose, gave me a bone-crushing handshake, and said, “Good to know you, Mr. Ellison.”

“Same here,” I said, though I doubted that would prove to be true. We both sat down, and I added, “Ben.”

Rossi nodded and smiled.

The secretary set a cup of freshly brewed coffee in an Italian ceramic mug before me. It was very good. I extracted a yellow legal pad from my briefcase and my Mont Blanc rollerball.