Jeffery Deaver - Edge

“Here’s the result of the phone call traces you asked me for.” She handed me a folder. I read it fast but completely. The answer was pretty much what I’d expected.

DuBois then handed me a second file-dealing with the alleged Ponzi scam. This was filled with a lot of paperwork and documents. I glanced up and she summarized, “Clarence Brown, aka Ali Pamuk.” She shuffled through them. “Detective Kessler hadn’t gotten too far with the case.”

“He told me. He was busy.”

“And nobody in the Department or the SEC was that concerned.”

“Poor, minority victims.”

“Not much money involved. And no loudmouths to stand up for them. Like Al Sharpton. Pamuk has an office in South East but it’s a short-term lease. All the furniture’s rented. A secretary and two assistants. Neither of them’ve graduated from college. It just doesn’t smell right. You’d think that if you were an investment advisor you’d have something that wasn’t so cheesy. Now, I saw this movie. All the President’s Men.”

“It was a book too.”

“Was it? Well, in it-”

“I know the story.”

“To track down what was going on, the reporters followed the money. I was thinking about it and that’s what I did.”

“Good.”

She continued, “I know some people at Treasury and State. And this lawyer who’s involved in international banking treaties.” She seemed to know half of the under-thirty population in the District of Columbia. “Ever since the Swiss got scared, the UBS thing a few years ago, and started to chatter, it’s not quite as hard to get information. But the trail’s really complicated.” She pulled a sheet of paper out of her file and showed me an elaborate diagram in her elegant handwriting. “I managed to find somebody at Interpol in Europe and MI6 in the U.K. They were working late or early or around the clock, I don’t know. To summarize, the investors’ money goes from D.C. to Georgetown-ha, that’s funny, I just realized. The Georgetown in the Cayman Islands. Not the Georgetown where I go to Dean and DeLuca. From there the money goes to London and Marseille and Geneva and Athens. Then, guess where?”

Pamuk’s dad was Turkish so I gambled on Istanbul or Ankara.

But the real answer was a lot more interesting. “Riyadh.”

Saudi Arabia, the origin of most of the Nine-eleven hijackers. Westerfield’s terrorist connection, which I’d thought was pretty speculative, was looking more and more possible.

“A British shell corporation. And from there, it goes to more companies throughout the Middle East but-how’s this?-they’re not Middle Eastern. They’re registered in America, France, Austria, Switzerland, England, China, Japan and Singapore. They’re all shell corporations. Every one of them. They get the money and from there it disappears.”

I sipped the bitter coffee. I summarized, “So investors aren’t getting their money out because it’s being used to fund terror operations by Hezbollah, the Taliban, Hamas, al Qaeda.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

It was a clever idea, using a Ponzi scam to produce revenue for terrorists. And, if true, it was doubly effective. The money Pamuk raised would not only fund operations but would also have secondary consequences: destroying the lives of people in the West who’d invested their savings with Pamuk.

“Where are we now?”

“The Saudis aren’t being cooperative. No surprise there. State and Interpol and local FBI’re doing some digging, trying to see who specifically is getting the money.”

I guessed that Pamuk could be a front man, picked probably because he had connections with the neighborhood-and his sympathies to fundamentalism. I wondered if he’d been the one who’d hired Henry Loving or if that had been someone in the Middle East.

“Any word about when they’ll know something?” I asked.

“By tomorrow, they hope.”

They hope …

“Now, about Graham,” I said.

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

We threaten. We don’t bluff …

I shrugged. She’d learned the lesson. The question was what to do about the situation.

I finished my coffee. I said in my mentor voice, “In this line of work?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes we’ve got to do things that test us. Push us to the extreme.”

She’d gone quiet. Unusual for her. But she was looking me in the eye, nodding slightly.

“That’s what we have to do now… But it’s really above and beyond the call of duty. I can’t order you to do it.”

DuBois touched the single button closing her jacket, subconsciously, I believed. Tucked in her waistband was a pistol similar to mine, the compact Glock. I’d seen her scores. She was a good shot and I remembered the image of her at our range, eyes focused and intense, beneath the yellow-lensed glasses, her short dark hair puffed out comically around the thick ear protectors. Always getting a tight grouping in the fifty-yard targets.

She’d be thinking, possible terrorist connection, possible New Jersey syndicate connection, even a Department of Defense conspiracy of some sort. Would there be a firefight?

She cleared her throat. “Whatever you need, Corte.”

I sized her up. Her still blue eyes, taut lips, steady breathing. She was ready for what we were about to do, I decided.

“Let’s go.”

“MR. GRAHAM?”

I was displaying my ID, which the man had glanced at as if he’d been expecting it all day, which he probably had been.

Trim-haired Eric Graham was about fifty, solidly built, though not overweight. He was in jeans and a sweater and he hadn’t shaved since rising for work on Friday.

He looked at me without interest and at duBois with sheerly veiled contempt, once he learned her name.

“Agent Corte, there’s nothing to talk about. The forgery case has been withdrawn. I really don’t understand what the federal government is doing, involved in this.”

“That’s not what I’m here about, sir… You mind if we come in just for a minute or two? It’s important.”

“I don’t see-”

“It won’t be long.” I was looking grim.

He shrugged and motioned us inside. He directed us to the den, whose walls were covered with photos, diplomas, certificates of achievement and memorabilia from his scholastic and athletic endeavors thirty years ago.

“As I explained to her,” Graham said icily, “I’m in a very sensitive job. It’s unfortunate that the money was stolen. But on the whole, in the interests of national security, I decided not to pursue a criminal case.” He gave a tight, insincere smile. “Why burden the D.C. police department anyway? They’ve got more important things to do than deal with a careless computer jockey who left his checkbook where it shouldn’t’ve been.”

We sat down around a circular coffee table with a glass top and a recess in the middle. Inside were pictures of Graham’s sports successes-college football and tennis. On the walls were some family photos: vacation, school pageants, holidays. I saw a few of his son, presumably the one whose future education had been derailed. I noted too photos of the daughters, also in college. They were twins. Many were of Graham with what looked like wealthy business associates and a politician or two.

There were no sights or sounds of family, though I saw two nearly empty coffee cups on the dining room table, around the remains of the Sunday Washington Post , and heard NPR talk radio on the stereo, the volume in the netherworld portion of the dial. I heard creaks coming from upstairs. A door closed. He’d sent the women and children off to the hills when the marauders arrived.

“I’m sorry about Detective Keller.”