I, however, had a different denouement in mind—one that involved Werner Lantos’s demise instead of mine. But there was no time to think about that now—there was work to be done. I examined the desk. The drawers were all unlocked. Now, newly wary of more booby traps, I was careful as I checked inside. There turned out to be no reason for concern: the drawers were empty except for a half-inch thick stack of monogrammed stationery, a few paper clips, two rubber bands, and half a dozen of his business cards. I inspected the credenza. It contained a box of plain white business envelopes. In the small closet adjacent to the door there were three wooden hangers—and nothing else. The tooled, high-backed leather desk chair bore virtually no sign of wear.
Does this sparseness and lack of data, files, correspondence, as well as the other ephemera that you always find in offices strike you as odd, friends? It sure struck me as odd. I mean, here are the offices of an investment bank that allegedly does millions—perhaps billions—of dollars’ worth of business all over the world. And yet, the place had the feel of a third-rate mortgage broker somewhere in suburban Virginia who’s just gone out of business.
Oh, he had his “Moi” wall—two dozen framed photographs of Werner Lantos and “friends,” all of them warmly inscribed. I could recognize three prime ministers of Israel. In another trio of photographs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Boris Yeltsin all scowled into the lens, their arms wrapped around Lantos’s shoulders. Deng Xiaoping and Werner Lantos grinned into the camera. So did the French presidents François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac. Framed, ornate certificates in three languages attested to Werner Lantos’s great humanity and generosity.
But, more to the point, there were no files—not even in the trio of custom-built file cabinets we found on the premises. Two empty folders and that was it. While I examined the floor and walls for secret compartments. Wonder and Avi turned the computers on and checked the hard disks. There, too, the lack of material was surprising. Nothing was encrypted. Each station held its own correspondence files and a word processing program. But there were no spreadsheets, no databases—nothing more than the most rudimentary software. No Windows 95. No game of solitaire or black jack. We’re talking about a paltry two hundred megs of data on a 1.6 gigabyte hard drive.
Avi stuck his head into Lantos’s office and watched as I replaced the last of the wall-to-wall carpet on its tacking. “Find anything?”
I shook my head. “Negatory. What about you?”
“Bupkis—Nothing,” he said. “The place is clean.”
He was right. In fact, that was it. It was clean—as clean as Andrei Yudin’s dacha.
Let me run that by you again. As clean as Andrei Yudin’s dacha. Of course—Werner Lantos had cleaned the place out after our little breakfast. He’d taken all the evidence and moved it elsewhere but left just enough to make it appear that he still worked here, then had Ehud the Hood booby-trap his laptop with an explosive device that would destroy the whole suite.
But remember what I said when I searched the dacha? I told you that no matter how the assholes try to sweep a place clean, there’s always a shard or two of evidence left behind. Always. It’s simply a matter of looking hard enough. At the dacha, it had been the Air France waybill. Here, it was the booby-trapped Toshiba.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. “But bring the damn laptop.”
Chapter 18
LET ME TELL YOU A STORY ABOUT OLLIE NORTH. WHEN THE scandal that came to be known as Iran-Contra was discovered. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and some of the folks working for him went through all the files in his office and shredded a huge number of them. Those files were never recovered. Then they went into the White House computer system and erased scores—even hundreds—more potentially incriminating materials. Virtually all of the correspondence, all of the E-mail, all of the sensitive messages to and from the participants of what the Iran-Contra Committees referred to as “The Enterprise,” were shredded electronically. The hard disks were emptied.
Except that, unlike paper files, shredded electronic files aren’t really shredded. The hard disks were not automatically wiped clean just because Ollie and his folks told the computers to “del *.*”
You out there raising your hand—you want to know why. Okay, I’ll let Stevie Wonder, who understands this shit, explain it to you. Stevie, give the folks some background.
“Sure, Dick. See, deleting a file simply changes the first character of its name in the File Allocation Table (known as the FAT). The new name begins with a character that the computer has been programmed not to show on-screen—so if you ask the computer to display that file, it won’t. But the ‘erased’ file is still on the hard drive. What’s more, even if the file is overwritten, there are ways to manipulate the FAT that will allow part or even all of the information to be resurrected. Some of the basic utility programs—like Norton Utilities—allow you to unerase files. Ever see how the erased file is missing the first character of its name? Well, basically what the utilities program does is allow you to restore that missing character, thus making the file ‘visible’ to the computer again.”
Thanks, Wonder. Now, you should also know that, unless you completely reformat a hard disk by using a special security utility, or overwrite every single byte of data on your disk, there is going to be a trail of electronic fingerprints left behind. And even if you do all of that it’s often possible to retrieve a small part of a file—at least enough of a fragment to give a canny investigator a general idea of what was there.
Who’s that in the back of the room with your hand in the air? You want to know what? You want to know why, if I know this shit, how come Werner Lantos doesn’t know it too?
Good point. You should think about becoming an editor. The answer is that most people don’t bother to learn how computers work. They just use ’em. That is especially true for big-time executives. That’s why, for example, my old adversary former Defense Secretary Grant Griffith left all the files that incriminated him on his laptop—without any encryption on ’em at all. It never occurred to him to protect the information. Hey, Ollie North and the folks working for him were pretty sophisticated, too—and they didn’t realize how much data is left behind after you’ve “erased” it.
So, if one has on hand a pair of accomplished computer wonks (like Wonder and Avi), and you have a nice warm apartment to hide in—and we did, courtesy of the LeClercs—and you have a few hours in which to play (and they did), and the LeClercs are willing to let you use their 200 megahertz, two gigabyte hard drive computer and laser printer, and you can write your own debugging programs, which my wild and wicked wonks were perfectly capable of doing, then you can start to reassemble some of the data that had been erased.
Which is exactly what happened. Oh, the pair of them didn’t come up with 100 percent of the goodies that had been stored on the booby-trapped computer’s hard drive. Far from it. It was obvious (well, it was obvious to Avi and Wonder, who explained to me that the C-drive was absolutely empty because it had been wiped clean) that before Mon Sewer Lantos had Ehud the Hood arm the computer, he’d erased all his files. But after three hours of hunt-and-peck searching, there were enough reassembled bits and bytes so that my guys were able to provide me with a kind of patchy picture of what the hell was going on in the life of Werner Lantos.
And what was that, you ask?
Well, a couple of things. First, I’m no CPA. But from what I saw on the screen, it would seem that our pal Werner Lantos had been playing a Nicholas Leeson game of fast and loose with other people’s money. He’d invested tens of millions of dollars in a series of margin accounts on the Hong Kong stock market—and he’d lost. The people whose money he was playing with were out scores of millions of dollars.
But which people? That was a problem. The accounts were numbered. But there had to be a key somewhere—even a fragment would help. I turned to Avi and Wonder. “C’mon, guys, dig it out.”
Finding that file took them another c
ouple of hours of computer programming that was punctuated by polyglottal obscenity that I must tell you even made me blush. But when they’d finished, my wily wonks had managed to sort out a rough match between names and account numbers. How did they do it, you ask? Y’know what—I don’t care how the hell they did it. All that matters is that they got the job done. I perused the screen.
Werner’s personal finances were in pretty bad shape. But from the look of things he still had a quarter of a million dollars in one Swiss account, another hundred thou in a bank that had to be in Bahrain from the telephone code, and a third sum (amount unknown) in another location—which neither Avi nor Wonder could decipher.
They did a lot better when it came to the spreadsheet files. In fact, they were able to piece together more than 90 percent of the information.
One spreadsheet detailed a series of Russian weapons transfers to the Chinese—more than sixty million dollars had changed hands in the past eight months alone. That, friends, buys a lot of AK-47s and other small arms. I wondered what the hell the Chinese needed Russian weapons for when they were the world’s fifth largest arms exporter.
A second file held information about stolen nuclear materials. Viktor Grinkov and his pals were selling verboten technology to anyone who had hard currency. I perused the list. It included Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya—and the Syrians.
A third detailed Russian investments overseas. Through a series of blind corporations and other fronts, the Ivans were trying to make inroads in a dozen high-tech areas. That made sense—the Russkies had always run second best in the technological area. Now, they were using their hard currency to buy into Western companies that made everything from microprocessors to computer-encryption equipment. The only problem was that—from what I could see—Werner Lantos had skimmed twenty-five million bucks from the Ivans’ operational account to cover his margin-investment losses.
A fourth detailed deposits in a Cayman Island trust account, opened by Werner Lantos for one Bartlett Austin Wyeth, Jr. The file had been partially over written, but as of eight months ago, there had been just over half a million dollars in the account. That’s a lot of pieces of silver for selling your country out.
A fifth spreadsheet tracked Lantos’s private investment accounts—the ones he handled for the Ivans’ baksheesh. Viktor Grinkov’s name turned up right at the top of that list. The man who ran the Russian Ministry of the Interior was, it seemed, heavily invested—in a margin account—in a series of high-risk Hong Kong stocks. Stocks which, according to the figures I was looking at, had lost close to eight million smackers in the last six months.
And Viktor wasn’t the only Russkie who was losing his tunic in the Hong Kong market. There were half a dozen other margin accounts in various Ivans’ names, all controlled, so it would appear, by Werner Lantos.
Avi’s eyes went wide. “He’s got an account for an I. Katavtsvev—that’s Igor Katavtsvev, the chairman of the Duma committee on intelligence matters,” Avi said. “And Sergei Pavlov.” The Israeli whistled, impressed. “Pavlov runs GRU.” The acronym stands for the Russian Army’s chief intelligence directorate.
I looked over at Avi. “I wonder if any of them know about this in Moscow?”
“I’d doubt it. These guys aren’t edge-of-the-financial envelope types. They want their assets invested in nice, safe Swiss or Bahamian accounts. I think Lantos skimmed their cash when he brought it out of the country.”
“I wasn’t talking about the private stuff. That’s bad enough.” I tapped the sheet of paper on which Wonder had printed up the Russkie operational account. “This is worse.”
Was it ever. It was a KISS plan gone bad. Werner Lantos had skimmed somewhere between eight and ten million dollars from his Russian partners. He’d used the money to open up accounts under their names on the Hang Sang market in Hong Kong. Those accounts gave him roughly fifty million bucks’ worth of buying power. Then he’d invested everything on margin—that is, paying a fraction of the cost when he bought his shares, with the balance to be paid at a later time. His plan was to pay in full after the stocks had appreciated in value, then sell everything off, and slip the millions he’d skimmed back into the Russkies’ accounts in Geneva, or the Bahamas, or wherever. But the margin investments had gone sour, the banks had called in their markers, and poor Werner had been paying them off with more and more of the Ivans’ money.
“Bottom line—Viktor and the rest of the Russkies are out”—I looked at the screen—“somewhere between fifteen and twenty mil of their hard-stolen profits.” I pulled at my mustache. “Maybe we should print up all of these spreadsheets, fax ’em to Moscow, and see how they deal with Werner.”
A malevolent grin spread over Avi’s face. “I can do that,” he said. “I have all the ministry fax numbers in my phone book. It would be even more fun to make the damn things public, y’know—send ’em to the Interfax News Agency.” He reached into his pocket for the modem card and was about to insert it in the Toshiba when he realized what the hell he was about to do at the same instant Wonder and I tackled him and wrestled the goddamn thing out of his hand.
Besides, I have a better idea,” said Wonder.
Oh, did he?
“We have the Ivans’ account numbers and passwords in Hong Kong—that’s the money Werner’s lost.” He skimmed the laptop’s screen. “But we also have Russkie accounts in Bahrain, Singapore, Geneva, the Cayman Islands, and a couple of other places—a sizeable chunk of the Ivans’ weapons money. I’m talking about real cash in the bank, too.” He scrolled the screen. “Like about fifty, sixty million bucks.”
“So …”
“So, I suggest we take control of it all—change the passwords on ’em. I mean—who’re they gonna blame, us, or Werner?”
It was a depraved, rotten, nasty, dirty idea. It was wonderful. It was marvelous. “Can you do it?”
Wonder’s head went into its full-tilt Stevie Wonder left/right/left, right/left/right mode. “Whaddya you think? Of course I can do it.”
“Then do it—it’s a great idea. But don’t touch Lantos’s accounts. Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to spook him.” Another thought occurred to me. “Avi, is there any way you can check to see where Werner and Ehud are—quietly?”
Avi thought about it for a few seconds. “I think so,” he said. “There’s a secretary at the cultural center I’ve known for years—she’s the one who told me Ehud had been in. She keeps her ears open about certain things. And she doesn’t particularly like the current, ah, regime or its priorities at all. I think it might be worth buying her a cup of coffee.”
“Avi, do you mean a secretary, or a secret-tary?”
He winked at me. “I could tell you, Dick, but then I’d have to kill you.”
0825. Brud called with a message. My friend, he told me, cryptically referring to Kenny Ross, had left something for me at what he called, “The Gardener.” I was to get it, then call the following number, which he repeated twice to make sure I got it.
There is something mystifying about French spoken with a West Virginia accent, but being fluent in both frog and Frog, I realized that Brud was describing the Gare du Nord, the largest of Pans’s six railroad stations.
“And what about picking up the package?” I asked.
“Double D,” said Brud.
That would be a dead drop.
“Roger. Location?”
“There’s a mailbox at the the northern end of the first of the streets in the city you’re in, named after his first name. You’re to look for a double chalk. What you need is taped underneath.” Brud paused. “Your friend says you’d get this. I told him he’s crazy.”
“You were right.” I put the receiver down. WTF? The first street named Kenneth. I am familiar enough with the city to know that there is no street named Kenneth in Paris.
Duh—like how dense could I be? Gentle reader, what is Kenny Ross’s first name? Let’s all repeat it together. His first name is, Admiral.
I pulled out M
onsieur LeClerc’s Paris street guide and looked under amiral, which is the French spelling of admiral. The first listing was for a Boulevard de l’Amiral Bruix. I checked the map. The street ran southwest to northeast, and the metro stop closest to the northern end was Porte Maillot.
I pulled on my jacket. “Hold tight,” I said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
Wonder pulled himself out of his chair. “You want backup?”
I shook my head. “I can handle this.”
1042. I made the pickup at the Gare du Nord. I’d been careful about surveillance and I knew I wasn’t being followed. When I opened the locker with the key that had been taped to the bottom of the yellow mailbox, I discovered a plastic Galeries Lafayette bag, in which was a secure telephone. Secure phones are big and heavy. They’re about twice the size of commercial models—just about the same as one of those old ten-pound, Vietnam-era PRC-1 radio-telephones you see in military museums.
I took the bag, tucked it under my arm, and hustled down to the metro, where I played a game of jump on/jump off until I was certain that I was clean. I transferred onto the Porte d’Orléans line and rode to Boulevard St. Michel on the Left Bank. The “Boo Miche” station is always a madhouse—a condition that gave me the opportunity to use the crowds to hide in as I took the elevator to the street level.
Once above ground, I scampered through the throngs of tourists, students, street people, and itinerant musicians on the Rue des Arts, circled a narrow block of stores, cafés, and pizza joints, and came back on my track. No sign of surveillance.
I took my time, and walked along the Quai des Grands Augustins, surreptitiously checking my six as I browsed the book stalls and antique print dealers. Nada. I ambled across the Seine at the Pont Royal, and walked the long way back to the Café des Augustins, stopping at three friendly bars along the way to sample the coffee—and check for the opposition. I was alone.
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