He stared at her, his face granite.
She continued, concentrating for all she was worth on giving the performance of her lifetime. “You have certain unusual needs. And the organization I represent has a range of highly successful solutions to the many challenges you face.”
She scanned his face for any reaction—even the smallest indication of interest.
Nothing.
His fingers continued moving over the metal beads.
“We don’t offer these services to everyone, I’m sure you understand. My responsibility and speciality is to identify potential partners, and inform them of our services.”
Ava was breathing more easily now. It felt good to be talking. The cover was not guaranteed to work, but it was comforting to be slipping into a role. She did not want to be herself in front of Malchus any longer than she had to.
“I came to the rally because I wanted to meet you. As you can imagine, I don’t carry a business card, and we don’t take out advertisements in the phone book. My organization is not well known, and we keep our business private. That’s why we have presidents and prime ministers among our many satisfied customers.”
“I don’t believe I have any needs you or your organization can fulfil,” Malchus stated flatly.
“Yes, you do,” Ava countered confidently. “I pick our partners very carefully. And I’m good at what I do. My approach to you is not random.”
“You’ve got two minutes,” Malchus replied, looking at his watch.
Round one.
She smiled to herself. He was interested enough to give her time. Now she just had to keep him engaged.
But two minutes?
She felt like she was doing an elevator pitch at some business school. At that moment, there were probably hundreds of students from Texas to Taipei practising it right now: honing how to sell an idea to someone in the time it takes for an elevator to go from the ground floor to the top executive suite.
But none of them had a gun to their head.
Ava launched straight in, trying to make it sound like it was a speech she had given many times before.
“When our partners have cash that comes from sources they want to keep private, we offer assistance. We place their funds into the international money system on their behalf. And then later we return it to them, through accredited routes. Our partners get legitimate money they can spend freely.”
“So you’re in the laundry business,” Malchus sounded bored. “How disappointing. There are many people who can do that.”
Ava shook her head. “Not like this. We offer our partners something truly unique.” She looked at him conspiratorially. “Our partners are demanding and, as a result, you’ll see we’re far more sophisticated than most.”
Malchus was fingering the black rosary beads slowly. “Laundering is a basic service. It doesn’t call for much sophistication.”
Excellent
.
He was slowly engaging in the discussion. It was exactly what she wanted.
“Our methods are proprietary and highly confidential,” Ava answered.
“Then this conversation is over,” Malchus looked up at her sharply.
She bit her lip.
Take it slowly.
“We’ve been operating for over forty years,” Ava countered, unfazed. “And have never had an unsatisfied partner. I can’t disclose to you the details of how we do it, but what makes us stand apart from the crowd is that we don’t cost you or lose your money. In fact, we make more money for you.”
Keen to ensure he had got the point, she pressed on. “Traditional laundering wastes a lot of the money. When the client hands over a million dollars, he’s happy to see half a million back in clean funds. He could never spend the dirty million anyway, so it’s half a million more than he’d have without the laundering. The lost half a million goes on people who want their cut, officials who need to be paid off, and good old-fashioned losses from haphazardly trading stocks, shares, and assets just to muddy the audit trail, because that’s everyone’s priority. Covering tracks is much more important than making good investments.”
Ava was warming to her theme, enjoying making it all up, “We bring a different sort of expertise. We’re investment managers. Good ones. We’ll provide the most robust and sophisticated cleaning service currently available, but we’ll also make good investments. If a partner gives us a million, we’ll give the whole million back with interest. Our partners are unanimous—this is a truly unique and bespoke service.”
As she had been mentioning the details, she had seen his eyes widen just a touch.
He was interested.
No doubt about that.
She pressed on. “We have many strategies. Let me give you one example.”
She remembered a misty Virginia morning in Langley, listening to a humourless CIA anti-money-laundering agent explaining how it all worked. At the time, she had wondered how anyone could do his job, staring at columns of numbers all day. But she had paid enough attention to get a grip of the basics, which she had to admit had a whiff of the exotic, with exclusive banks on tropical islands and go-betweens jetting in and out with steel suitcases.
“We introduce our partners’ cash into the banking system in a country with water-tight bank secrecy laws. Forget Switzerland. It’s a Hollywood myth. The Swiss were compromised by the U.S. and gave up their independence a while ago. We prefer jurisdictions that still take bank secrecy seriously—like Singapore or Panama.”
His eyes widened fractionally for a millisecond. But Ava saw it.
Bullseye.
It never ceased to amaze her how getting a few facts right led listeners to assume that speakers had real expertise, and that everything else they said was therefore also accurate.
“It would be rash to assume any jurisdiction is watertight,” Malchus observed coldly.
Ava had to resist the urge to nod enthusiastically. “Which is why,” she continued, “if ever the accounts are compromised, they all lead back to genuine individuals: highly respectable philanthropists and industrialists—exactly the sort of people who regularly move large sums of money around the world and are beyond suspicion. They work with us, generously allowing us to blend our funds into their accounts in return for certain considerations we can offer them.”
Malchus was still watching her. Although the intensity of his gaze was unnerving, Ava was delighted to have his attention. It meant she might be getting somewhere.
She needed this to work.
“Then we go about mixing the money up. As we aim to deliver a profit, we actively invest the cash. We transfer it from the safe accounts to some of the world’s biggest banks and fund managers. We keep the amounts relatively small, as small sums attract lighter controls, and we spread the money about as much as possible—to make it virtually untraceable. We invest it in shares, bonds, hedge funds, real estate, commodities—anything that will turn a profit. Then, once the trail is a baffling ball of knitting, the cash is paid on to legitimate businesses. We arrange for our partners to have directorships of these companies, or to provide invoiceable services. So our partners get paid back their money, but to the governmental agencies it just looks like legitimate business payments.”
“How real are these end companies?” Malchus asked, frowning.
“It varies—according to price, naturally.”
“Naturally,” echoed Malchus, nodding. There was no hint of humour.
“They cover all sectors—energy, technology, transport, hospitality, construction, you name it. Our simpler service involves dummy companies with offices in relatively quiet places that rarely get any attention from the authorities—like Copenhagen, Salzburg, Toledo, and other nine-to-five business towns. If anyone investigates, they’ll find these businesses are ultimately owned by a network of holding companies and nominee trusts in privacy-friendly countries like Hong Kong or the Cayman Islands. Law enforcement would waste years trying to unravel it.”
“And your enhanced service?” Malchus was watching her carefully.
“If our partners have marketable skills or relevant profiles, we can place them directly onto advisory boards and panels of real companies, often household name companies which are entirely unaware of the true nature of the arrangement. On the other hand, if our partners prefer absolute anonymity, we can create services and paperwork through shell-companies for them. So in all cases, our partners are being legitimately paid for their work. We offer many variations on the theme. As I say, this is just one of our services. We have others.”
Malchus’s eyes were darting about as he evaluated the proposition from all the angles. “And what credentials can your organization provide?”
Slowly
.
Ava forced herself not to look too keen.
Reel him in slowly
.
She knew she had him. But he was volatile, and needed careful handling.
“I have to earn my money somehow,” Ava said with a smile. “So the security is … ,” she paused, “… me.”
She had thought that might finally get a response from Malchus.
His face remained unresponsive.
She carried on. “I’ll offer you a one-day trade, so you can see how it works. You give me the money in the morning. I’ll arrange for it to be placed in a friendly bank. By that evening, you’ll have your money back again, fully invoiced and legitimately paid to you for consultancy services you will have provided to a hotel chain. You won’t earn much interest for such a short deposit, but you’ll have me, as collateral, with you all day.”
Ava looked at him hard. “You’ll understand that if I did not have absolute confidence in my organization, I wouldn’t place myself in this position. We know who you are, and we know what you would do to me if your money was not returned intact. That is how strongly I guarantee our service.”
Malchus nodded again.
His robot-like coldness sent a shiver down her spine. She knew he would think nothing of disposing of her.
“After the first trade, of course, we cannot extend you the same security. You’ll never see me again—but then I’m sure that’s the way you’ll want it, too. We won’t communicate, although I’ll give you ways to contact me in an emergency.”
Ava held her breath.
Had it been enough?
She had played her cards. Now she could only wait.
Malchus stood up. He was still smoothing his dark rosary. “An unusual proposition.” His sea-green eyes seemed to be looking right through her. “I’ll need to make some enquiries.”
You mean check-up on me.
“Let’s discuss this again in a few days,” he concluded. “I’m sure we both have practicalities to attend to.”
“Of course,” Ava nodded.
It had worked.
She had to force herself to keep the relief and jubilation off her face. She could not quite believe he had bought it.
He turned as the door opened.
His driver entered, carrying a sheet of paper.
As he handed it to Malchus, Ava thought she saw a photograph of herself on it.
Her heart skipped a beat.
What on earth
…
?
As Malchus took it, she saw the paper more clearly. This time there was no doubt. There was definitely a picture of her on it, kneeling on the floor in the room. It could only have been taken in the last few minutes, while she had been talking. Her eyes scanned the walls, and then she saw it—a small white box mounted above the picture rail, high on the wall in front of her.
A tiny circle of glass in the middle announced it was a security camera.
Malchus sat back down in the dark brown sofa, and stared at the sheet of paper, tapping it with his finger.
At length he spoke, his voice betraying nothing except a cold efficiency. “So, it’s all lies.”
Ava frowned at him. “What?”
“I’ll grant you this—you’re good. But,” he paused, “not good enough, it seems.”
“I don’t understand,” Ava countered, unsure what was happening, feeling the situation slipping away from her.
“Apparently you have no name and no history.” He turned the paper round so she could read it.
It was some kind of identity search. She did not recognize the system or database. Her photograph was matched to an old identity photo, but the boxes for name, height, weight, colour of eyes, nationality, employment, and all the other usual fields were blank.
Ava felt a wave of panic wash over her.
This was not good.
Malchus breathed out decisively. “A blank report could be owing to a number of things. Either you never existed—which is plainly not the case. Or maybe you’ve had an identity change, perhaps with extensive reconstructive surgery?”
He stalked over to her and grabbed her face by the chin. He turned her head roughly from one side to the other, inspecting the skin under her eyes, round her nose, by her ears, and around her hairline.
His grip was vice-like. She twisted her head in defiance, trying to free herself. But he was too strong.
“Or,” he continued, still gripping her chin tightly so she could not move her neck, and lowering his face to hers until she could feel his breath, “the international authorities have purposefully erased your profile. And, in my considerable experience of such things, they would only do that if you were in some way connected with them.” He released her head, pushing it away from him as if it were something distasteful.
Ava’s heart was hammering hard. She had to force herself to keep her breathing under control.
How could this have happened?
When she left the Firm, her resettlement programme included resetting her ever-changing profiles in the UK government central intelligence and other databases to her new one. The form Malchus was holding should be showing information on her career in academia and museums, with up-to-date information about her role in Baghdad. It should never, then or now, have been blank. She should have checked out as a legitimate civilian—leaving her free to lead a double life as an unknown money-launderer, or anything else she chose.
What had happened?
Her mind was whirring.
“So, who are you?” He stared down at her. “The truth, this time.”