[Katerina Carter 01.0] Exit Strategy

by Colleen Cross

  “There is something you could help me with—finding out where these mines are selling their output. Since we found them at Liberty, I assume they’re being sold illegally.”

  “I can do that. I’ll make a few calls. What’s your deadline?”

  “Yesterday—or soon as you can get it.” Cindy didn’t know Kat had been fired from Liberty. She’d tell her eventually, but now wasn’t the time.

  “That time frame’s going to be tough. There are a lot of threads to chase. Many of the diamonds in Africa come from small operators, individuals called diggers. They eke out a living selling their finds to intermediaries, who give them pennies on the dollar. That’s in addition to the mine’s daytime output.”

  “You mean it’s not just the mine itself selling the output, but also individuals?”

  “That’s right. Some of these diggers pay the mine itself for the right to dig there at night. Some just trespass. And the intermediaries could have bought from anyone.”

  Another roadblock. Why was nothing about Liberty straightforward?

  “It’s whoever those intermediaries are selling to. That’s who we want,” Kat said.

  “I know, but in order to find them, we have to start at the source. That should lead us to the buyers, usually drug traffickers, organized crime, or others who need a way to launder their money.”

  “Doesn’t the RCMP have a list of these people?”

  “It’s not that easy, Kat. If they’ve never been caught, we don’t know about them. And criminals like to vary their modus operandi. On the plus side, this is big money and it probably took a lot of arranging. So if it’s working, it’s unlikely to be abandoned any time soon.”

  “I’m assuming that with all this sneaking around, the diamonds wouldn’t be certified under the Kimberly Accord. How can they sell them without Kimberly certification?” Without the right papers, diamonds weren’t supposed to change hands. The idea was to prevent rebels using diamond profits to undermine and overthrow governments. At least that was the theory.

  “There are places. If you know the right people in Dubai, for instance. At the right discount, someone will take them, Kimberly certified or not. A drug kingpin with billions of dollars to launder would be willing to take them. And diamonds are a preferred method of payment for some Middle Eastern terrorist groups.”

  Cindy paused.

  “Kat, I still don’t understand how the diamonds would get into Liberty. Wouldn’t it be difficult to smuggle such large amounts into the mine on a regular basis? Aren’t the roads in the Arctic closed in the winter?”

  “Yes, but they don’t have to take them to the mine. They can ship them to the cutting house, just like the real ones. The shipping documentation is faked so they appear to be from Liberty’s Mystic Lake mine. In reality they could be from anywhere.”

  “Okay. I can buy that. But Liberty has to buy these diamonds from somewhere, right? Wouldn’t the cost of the diamonds wipe out any additional profits?”

  “You’re right. Someone must have purchased them. And that’s what confused me at first. The production has definitely been altered. I can prove that. But I couldn’t find a payment transaction. And I’m also convinced that no one would give the diamonds to Liberty for free.”

  “How many diamonds are we talking about, Kat?”

  “Well, that’s where it gets interesting. It’s been going on for at least a couple of years. I’m convinced Bryant’s five billion was meant to be payment for at least part of it.”

  Cindy let out a low whistle.

  “That buys a lot of diamonds. When did it stop?”

  “It’s still going on, Cindy.”

  “Do you think Bryant was framed?”

  “Possibly, but I’m not sure.” Kat couldn’t tell Cindy about Bryant being at Clara’s last night.

  “Well if he was framed, that changes everything. Bryant could potentially be a missing person, and not a thief. What did Liberty’s management say when you expressed your concerns?”

  No response.

  “Kat? You didn’t tell them?”

  “I can’t. Not until I have more proof. It’s too risky. At this point, whomever I tell could be involved in the fraud. How do I know who to trust? I need the intermediary information.”

  “I’ll do some digging. It sounds like you’ve got an international crime connection here. Are you sure you don’t have any other leads? If I had more to go on, I might be able to come up with some names.”

  Kat considered revealing Clara’s identity, then decided against it. True, it would speed things up. But she didn’t have the money yet, and a premature move by the police would jeopardize the chances of ever recovering it. A few keystrokes or a phone call and it could be gone forever. She studied the list of numbers on the marinara stained paper from Susan’s garbage. Once she had the money, then she would cooperate.

  34

  The numbers on the paper from Clara’s garbage were arranged in three groups. The first read:

  $23.4B

  13434589TQ

  41445

  119846768

  784119888718

  642389

  The other sets of numbers were similar except they contained no letters. Were they bank account numbers? Did the B stand for billion? That amount of money was staggering. Kat did a quick tally. The three sets of numbers added to fifty billion. She could tie the original bank account number back to the missing five billion. Fifty billion was a tenfold profit, and tied in with Rashida’s comments. Could this be a list of Clara’s planned transfers?

  Unbelievable. Then again, stealing five billion in the first place was pretty outrageous. Assuming the “B” really was shorthand for billion, the fifty billion total was greater than the GDP of half the world’s countries. How had Clara turned five billion into fifty? Liberty didn’t have that kind of money.

  Jace had arrived straight from work with takeout pizza a couple of hours ago. Now it was after nine, and Kat wasn’t any closer to deciphering the numbers.

  “Where did you go this morning?” he asked. “I woke up at four and you were already gone.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I came here.” Not exactly a lie—she did get here eventually.

  “Where did all this stuff come from? It looks like someone’s garbage.”

  “It is garbage. It’s from Susan’s wastebasket at Liberty. I was intercepting it—before she fired me.” It was too obvious to pass it off as anything but garbage. At least an office wastebasket sounded better than a Rubbermaid garbage can full of kitchen scraps. And she didn’t have to explain Bryant and the raccoons.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up? Or leave a note? I missed you.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb your sleep.” She was getting used to sharing the bed and the benefits of Jace’s body heat. But that brought all sorts of other complications. She had to do something about their sleeping arrangements.

  “I’m surprised I didn’t notice you gone. First time in a week I’ve had enough covers.” Jace held the empty pizza box in his right hand as he surveyed the piles of garbage. “What pile does this go in?”

  “This isn’t funny, Jace. If I hadn’t stolen the garbage, I never would have found this paper. Are you with me or against me?”

  “Of course I’m with you,” Jace said, pointing to one of the piles. “Clara sure eats a lot of canned food.”

  Kat walked over to her laptop at the reception desk, the coffee-stained paper in her hand.

  “If these are Clara’s bank transfers, it proves she’s a criminal. If I crack it, I can stop the Porter takeover, and maybe even get the money back.”

  “But the vote’s at eleven tomorrow morning,” Jace said. “And all the banks are closed.”

  “I know. If only I could tell which of these is for the Opal account at Bancroft Richardson.”

  “Can’t you just call Rashida first thing tomorrow and ask?”

  “No, she won’t tell me. She told me she’s already given me too much confidenti
al information.” But Kat had an idea.

  “Harry’s got an account at Bancroft Richardson. If I knew his account number, I could compare it and see if the syntax is similar. It probably has the same combination of digits as Clara’s.” Uncle Harry had just left this afternoon for a curling bonspiel in Saskatoon.

  “Doesn’t Harry monitor his account online here at the office? Did you write down his account number when you talked to Rashida?” Jace’s forehead wrinkled in thought.

  “No, but if Harry hides his statements from Elsie, he might file them here.” Kat rifled through the reception desk drawers. Nothing.

  “Where would he keep something like that?”

  “The filing cabinet?” Kat pulled open the top drawer and checked under B for Bancroft Richardson. Nothing. I for Investments also came up empty. Kat pulled files from the cabinet in sections as she tried to remember Harry’s filing rules.

  “How about M for money?” Jace said.

  “Worth a try.” Kat closed the top drawer and moved to the one underneath. She pulled out a file titled “M–BR”. Half a dozen Bancroft Richardson statements fell out onto the floor. She picked them up and scanned the account number: 15782631RQ.

  “That matches the number-letter combination in the first set of Clara’s numbers.”

  “So it seems to be a Bancroft Richardson account. Now we’ve just got to figure out Clara’s password.”

  “Maybe the password’s on the same paper.”

  “I doubt it. She’s not that careless. But if I can figure out the password syntax from Harry’s account, maybe I can guess what Clara used. If I can hack into the Opal account, I can verify the transactions in the account against Clara’s paper.” It would provide proof that Clara planned to transfer the funds out to her own accounts.

  “Harry wouldn’t keep his password here. He would have it memorized.”

  “Uh, uh, Jace. Not my Uncle Harry. He doesn’t remember anything unless it’s written down. It’s got to be here somewhere.” Kat moved to the Ps. “I think I’ve got it.”

  She pulled out a file marked “PWD”. There was only one slip of paper inside. It read HURRYHARD. A curling term. What a surprise.

  “Let’s try it,” Jace said.

  “I don’t know—I feel funny hacking into his account.”

  “You’re right. I guess we’ll just have to wait until he gets back.”

  But the shareholder vote was tomorrow. If she could crack Clara’s password…

  “I’m going to do it. Uncle Harry will understand. I’ll beg forgiveness later.”

  She walked back to her desk and signed onto the Bancroft Richardson website. She typed in the account number and HURRYHARD, and waited.

  “I’m in!” She decided to reset Harry’s password to see what possible combinations of letters and numbers were allowed. She entered a new one with some numbers. An error message appeared.

  “It says it has to be 6–12 letters. That tells us the password is strictly alpha—no numbers. But narrowing it down to letters only still means a huge number of combinations.”

  “What word or words would be meaningful to Clara?” Jace sat on the edge of the reception desk, chomping away on the last piece of cold pizza.

  “No idea. But we need to figure that out, since we’ll only get three guesses at most before the login is disabled. We need to be sure before typing it in.”

  She sat back on the floor beside the paper pile and began sifting through the contents.

  She thumbed through a cell phone bill, some scribbled notes, pages from a calendar, and an empty envelope with indecipherable writing scribbled across the back.

  Jace came over and grabbed a soiled envelope from the pile and opened it.

  “Hey, let me see that.”

  Jace handed it to her. It was a greeting card, addressed to Clara and Vicente, wishing them Feliz Anniversário.

  “Clara’s married?” Kat asked.

  But Jace was already at Kat’s laptop. He googled Clara de la Cruz and Vicente.

  “Vicente’s her husband. Vicente Sastre. Or was. He was murdered two years ago. No one was ever charged.”

  “Vicente is seven letters,” Kat said. “Maybe we should try it.”

  “What if it’s wrong? Why don’t we wait and see what else turns up?”

  “We can’t afford to wait with the vote tomorrow. Besides, we can try once or twice. If it doesn’t work, no problem. It will reset itself in another twenty-four hours.” Kat knew, however, that once the shareholder vote went Clara’s way, there was no reason for her to stick around.

  She typed in the account at the top of the page and typed in VICENTE.

  Login incorrect.

  “Try it again, this time without all caps.”

  “But how—all lower case, or capitalize the V?”

  She really had only one more chance, because if she missed a third time, it would lock up completely.

  “Hmmm. The correct way is with a capital V. But most people wouldn’t do that. I would try all lower case.”

  Kat thought so too. She typed in vicente and stared at it for a minute.

  “Oh, what the hell.” She pressed enter and held her breath. Nothing happened.

  Then the welcome screen came up. She was in.

  Account 1343589TQ belonged to Opal Holdings.

  35

  “Man, you’re good. Smart and sexy.”

  Kat smiled back at Jace.

  “You helped. Let’s see what we’ve got.” Kat clicked on Account History and scanned the records.

  “Look at this.” She pointed to the first line. It was a deposit for five billion dollars, made two weeks ago. Its sheer size would attract attention: Rashida and everyone else at Bancroft Richardson should have been talking about it.

  “So why wasn’t she immediately suspicious? Someone deposits five billion in cash in a brokerage account at your company, makes huge profits on one stock, and you don’t anything about it?” Jace walked over to the window.

  “Maybe she didn’t. Questions could result in answers she didn’t want to hear. Answers that might jeopardize the deposit. A five billion dollar deposit generates a lot of fees for Bancroft Richardson. Better to keep your head in the sand, and make money off the commission and transaction fees. Besides, it wasn’t Rashida’s account. It belonged to that sleazy broker Moretti. But others would have seen it or been aware of it. The accountants and the bankers, for instance.”

  “It was deposited a couple of days after Bryant disappeared with the five billion. Kind of coincidental, don’t you think?”

  “Too coincidental.” Kat scrolled down the screen. The account was opened with the five billion wire transfer in from Lebanon. There were a number of transactions after that, out of cash and into short sales of Liberty. Every one of them profitable. The account balance was just shy of fifty billion until three days ago.

  Then a series of transfers reduced the account back to just over five billion.

  “Hand me that list.”

  Jace handed it to her, and she compared the amounts transferred out to the numbers below the Bancroft Richardson account number.

  “See this?” Kat drew pointed at a line halfway down the computer screen. “It matches Clara’s list. It’s a transfer out to another bank. She’s set up walking accounts to stay one step ahead.”

  “Walking accounts? What’s that?”

  “If you want to move your money around so no one can catch you, you set up a series of accounts at different banks around the world. When it reaches the first one, you immediately transfer it to a second. When it reaches the second, you arrange it so it goes to a third account right away, and so on.”

  “So you stay one step ahead of whoever is trying to follow you?”

  “Exactly,” Kat said. “She’s covering her tracks so no one can trace the money.”

  “I get it. By the time you figure it out, she’s long gone.”

  “That’s right. The other numbers on the list are other brokera
ge or bank accounts.”

  “So, assuming she used the same password, and most people do, we can follow the money by logging onto her other accounts?”

  “Hopefully. There’s just one problem. There’s no description on the transfers out—just account numbers. That makes it hard to figure out which banks the money went to. There are thousands of possibilities. Could be the Caymans, Guernsey, Malta, who knows?”

  How could she narrow it down? Would Clara use an Argentine bank? Probably not, Kat thought. She’d find a tax haven with solid bank secrecy laws. That still left hundreds of banks to look at. She glanced at her watch, surprised at the time. It was already 3:30 a.m. The shareholder vote was in less than six hours.

  36

  The Crystal Ballroom in the Waterfront Hotel was opulent, with heavy brocade draperies framing large windows with a panoramic view of the harbor. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the center of the domed ceiling, reflecting the light in all directions. Pretty fancy for a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Kat thought.

  She scanned the crowded room, looking for any familiar faces. Shareholders filled the room, anxious to vote on Porter’s takeover offer. Some were already seated, but others clustered in small groups, chatting along the row ends, waiting for Liberty’s special shareholder meeting to convene.

  Kat had taken pains to dress her best for such a pivotal meeting. She had chosen an emerald green Elie Tahari suit, bought back when she was still gainfully employed. It complimented her eyes and accentuated her auburn hair, which was pulled back in a chignon. It felt good to dress up again. Getting fired had put her in a fashion slump, slumming around in ripped jeans and old T-shirts. With makeup and lipstick she felt grown up again. A surge of adrenaline coursed through her. She felt as though she could take on the world. That was a good thing, because she was about to.