The Russia Account

by Stephen Coonts

  “How about these blurry photos? Looks like you shot people getting on and off the chopper.”

  “Yep. Amazingly, computers can resolve these most of the time if we get a good facial shot at a decent angle. We send them encrypted via the satellite. See that guy there? Iranian oil guy would be my guess. We got him coming and going, eight photos total. And that one there? Obviously a Korean. We got six of him. The company doesn’t give us their names.”

  “So how long has the company been watching Korjev?”

  “Like I said, he got there a couple of weeks—”

  “No. Weeks, months, years. How long?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Here and other places, like Cannes, Majorca, Monaco, maybe Corfu, and some other places, I’d be guessing. We keep an eye on this crowd. This set-up has been here quite a while. Years, maybe.”

  “But we’re not in every port?”

  “Of course not. We only have so big a budget and so many people. For Christ’s sake, this is the fuckin’ government, Tommy.”

  “Yeah. Got any booze here?”

  “All the comforts… If you like bourbon or Scotch.”

  “I do.” My right hand was aching, so I decided to self-medicate. I should know better than to hit some bozo in the jaw. I thought I was lucky I didn’t break some bones, but the way my hand was aching, I may have cracked one or two.

  A car picked Jake Grafton up at Joint Base Andrews, the old Andrews Air Force Base, and took him to Langley. The early morning was squishy, the lights of the city making the low clouds glow. At his request, Sarah Houston was waiting in his office.

  The admiral didn’t even say hello. “Okay, what do you have?” he said as he closed the door behind them.

  “We have ten people working around the clock, trying to trace the money that came from that branch bank. Five each on twelve-hour shifts. That server Tommy stole in Tallinn arrived yesterday and we’re mining it. We think it has two years-worth of transactions on it. The codes for the Bank of Scandinavia in Stockholm are worthless. They changed them the moment they found out the server was stolen.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A lot of the money apparently came to the United States.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “So far as we have been able to determine, downstream many of the foreign currencies seem to have been exchanged for dollars.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Grafton grumped. “The American dollar is the world’s reserve currency.”

  Grafton fell onto the couch and ran his hand through his hair.

  “How long before you can give me some kind of a spreadsheet on this?”

  Sarah Houston was tired and sank into a chair. “There’s more. The shell corporations that we have looked at here in the States didn’t just start receiving money in the last few months. This has been going on for years. Oh, and some of the shells dropped out and some more started receiving money. It’s a mess.”

  “Years…”

  “At least four would be my guess, based on the state records of when these shell corporations were created. The FBI is already visiting state capitols. All we told them was that we’re interested in these corporations—not why. Here at Langley, we’ve only sampled the river. Assuming the worst case, we think over two hundred billion dollars has been going though that branch bank in Tallinn in the last four years.”

  Grafton merely stared.

  Finally, he whispered, “Where in hell is all this money coming from?”

  “More to the point,” Sarah said, “Where is it going?”

  “Yes,” Jake mused. His eyes widened. “Some people are getting filthy rich.”

  “Remember the Panama Papers?” Sarah asked.

  Indeed, Jake did. Records from a Panamanian law firm were leaked to the press in 2016. It then soon appeared that a branch of Deutsche Bank in the British Virgin Islands had more than 900 customer accounts that had run 311 million euros—about $353 million U.S.—through it in the year 2016 alone. Two of the bankers were accused of helping set up accounts for criminals in tax havens. A couple of Swedish banks were also involved, and they paid fines and had their wrists slapped. But the Germans authorities went after Deutsche Bank with a vengeance two years later. It took that long to merely sort out the records.

  “Deutsche Bank was accused of laundering drug money,” Jake said. “After that wash operation was shut down, that money had to go someplace. The drug syndicates are still in business peddling their poisons. Maybe the money went to Estonia, with the help of some Russian banks.”

  Sarah Houston brushed her hair back from her face. “This is about eight or ten times as much money as the Deutsche Bank’s rogue branch in the Virgin Islands laundered. Drugs are profitable, but not this profitable. Why are you assuming the money that went through Estonia was real?”

  “Banks don’t—” Jake Grafton was galvanized. He stood up and strode around the room several times. Finally he settled into his chair behind his desk.

  “Banks are only supposed to take real money,” Sarah said, completing the sentence. “Real banks have to balance the accounts, income versus out-go, every single day. The banking authorities are sticklers on that. But what if some Russian banks making the transfers are just… shells? What if some of these banks making transfers to Tallinn are creating money out of thin air?”

  “Counterfeiting?”

  “Why not? Some bank somewhere in Russia electronically transfers money to an account at the branch bank in Estonia. It doesn’t stay there long. The account holder, a Russian, sends the money along on its merry way to… wherever. You only assume that there was money in Russia to back up the original transfer. What if there wasn’t?”

  “Then the Russian bank collapses.”

  “Or doesn’t.”

  Grafton pulled out a lower drawer and propped his feet up on it. Then he kicked off his shoes. “Two hundred billion dollars in four years.”

  “Maybe,” Sarah said. “Maybe more, maybe less. Right now, only God knows, and He isn’t telling.”

  Grafton muttered a cuss word.

  “Anyway, it may have been fake money when it started its journey,” Sarah said with a sigh, “but it’s real money now.”

  Grafton sat thinking about that. “It’s not enough money to destabilize the money supply,” he said.

  “Lord, no,” Sarah agreed. She looked exhausted. “The American economy has a GDP of twenty trillion dollars a year. Fifty billion is a mere quarter of one percent of the American economy. It’s a pittance compared to the money the Fed creates every year, a tiny drop in a vast bucket, a rounding error.”

  “It’s big money if you got some of it,” Jake Grafton said, his voice flinty.

  Sarah nodded. “For wine, women, and song, if you are bent that way. Or enough money to fund a serious drug import business, take over some businesses, build skyscrapers, fund immigrant caravans, buy elections, make movies… manufacture cars, computer chips, pharmaceuticals, cell phones, booze, toilet paper… Enough money to build an empire.”

  “Enough,” the old attack pilot echoed.

  A minute later he said, “Thanks, Sarah. See you tomorrow.”

  “I have no proof that it’s funny money,” the master hacker said. “Just a gut feeling. This isn’t a million here, a million there. It’s hundreds of millions every day, billions every month.”

  She stood. Jake Grafton was lost in thought as she left the room and closed the door behind her. After a moment, he said to the four walls, “It’s real money now.”

  He was still sitting behind his desk when the dawn came.

  The receptionist brought him a breakfast tray from the cafeteria, complete with a small pot of coffee. “I want to see all the department heads and the deputy director at eight o’clock,” he told her. “Call them at home.”

  “Yes, sir. The morning summary is on the tray.”

  He poured some coffee and looked at it. The first story leaped at him. The chairman of the Bank of Scandinavia drowne
d in his bathtub last night. Grafton looked at his watch. While he was somewhere over the Atlantic.

  “Yegan Korjev, Russian billionaire and Putin pal,” Jake told the CIA brass. “And the chairman of the board and the president of the Bank of Scandinavia, both recently deceased. I want complete dossiers on all three on my desk as soon as possible. Everything we know, everything the FBI knows, everything the State Department and NSA know—everything.”

  Grafton summarized what he knew about the river of money flowing through the Estonian branch bank. “It’s been going on for years—we don’t know how many. Billions of dollars every month. A lot of it has been coming to the States.”

  “Money laundering?” one department head asked.

  “We don’t know,” Grafton said. He wasn’t about to repeat Sarah’s speculations, although he had decided she was probably right. Real money didn’t flow like this, except perhaps from government treasuries in the third or fourth world. And not this much. That, he thought, was the real problem—there was simply too much money.

  They discussed housekeeping details, priorities—because the world was in its usual turmoil and the agency had limited resources—then Grafton turned to the deputy director, Jack Norris. “You are our liaison with the FBI. They are going to have to investigate the American money trail. No way around that.”

  “I’ll get briefed and go downtown to talk to Levy.” Robert Levy was the director.

  “As soon as possible,” Jake said, then shooed everyone out. The whole meeting took about ten minutes. Grafton didn’t like long meetings.

  After the big honchos had scattered, Grafton called the White House on a secure line, identified himself and was soon talking to Reem Kiddus, the president’s chief of staff. “I need to see you this morning, if possible.”

  “Is this about Sweden, by chance?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “The Swedish ambassador has been making noises to the State Department. Your name came up. Something about the CIA rooting in confidential Swedish bank records. Then there’s the bank mess over there that’s on the news—the president will be asked about that.”

  “I was in Stockholm over the weekend. Just got back early this morning. I’ll brief you.”

  “This afternoon after lunch, Jake. That’s the best I can do.”

  “See you then.”

  Since he had the wheels turning, Jake Grafton went home to shower, shave, and visit with his wife. He took along a locked briefcase with another two months-worth of printouts from Sarah Houston’s shop of the Estonian branch bank’s transactions to show to Kiddus.

  When he had his tie knotted, Jake went to the breakfast nook to have coffee with Callie and watch her eat a poached egg.

  Reem Kiddus was a lawyer and political operative. He was smart, loyal to the president, had a low tolerance for fools, and by reputation was absolutely ruthless. He and Grafton knew and trusted each other. He listened to Grafton’s summary of what had happened in Estonia and Stockholm, asked a few questions, looked at the printouts, then sat staring at the admiral. “This is going to be a major shit storm,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The Democrats in Congress are investigating the president for everything he and his businesses have done since he got out of diapers. They’ll go nuts with this.”

  “I suppose.”

  Kiddus leaned back in his chair and scratched his chin. “A major FBI investigation… the politicians will hear about this soon, if they haven’t already.”

  Grafton closed his empty briefcase. Kiddus could have the paper.

  “Is it real money?”

  “One of my staff pointed out that if it wasn’t when it went into the branch bank, it is now. It’s in accounts God knows where, and people are undoubtedly spending it, paying bills and taxes, buying securities or whatever.”

  “How long before you and the FBI can create a money trail?”

  Grafton shrugged. “Months, maybe years. Whoever got some of this money had to explain it somehow to their colleagues, boards of directors, accountants, and the tax authorities. They’ll hide behind their facades and demand that we prove they lied. You’re a lawyer: you know how it is. Innocent until proven guilty. And if they’ve done a good enough job creating explanations, we may never crack the walls. Oh, we’ll catch some incompetent crooks, but the smart ones…” He let it hang.

  “It doesn’t work that way in politics,” Reem Kiddus said with a frown. “In politics, the rule is guilty until proven innocent. If the Democrats can ever show that the president’s businesses or enterprises ever got a dime of this money, for any reason, they’ll try to impeach him.”

  Jake wasn’t going to argue with that assessment. He knew the state of domestic political warfare as well as anyone who read newspapers or watched television. Thank God this isn’t my problem, he thought.

  What he did say was, “If Putin was looking for a way to destabilize the United States, emasculate it politically for years to come, he couldn’t have dreamed up a better scheme.”

  Kiddus made no comment. Played with the stack of paper. No doubt he was trying to think of the best way to handle this problem in Washington before it became a self-sustaining chain reaction. Grafton knew without being told that Kiddus merely advised the president, Vaughn Conyers, who had his own survival instincts well-honed. The president would make the decisions on how to proceed. Or if.

  “The fact is,” Grafton continued, “at this stage of the game no one knows where that money went or who ended up with it. It could be anyone. Could be a lot of people. Probably was a lot. Even the vampires who want the president’s blood will realize that going off half-cocked could backfire dramatically when the revelations start hitting the press, as they will sooner or later. There’s always another election coming.”

  Kiddus shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “So what is your next step?”

  “Yegan Korjev. He left tracks. We’ll find them.”

  “He may die suddenly,” Kiddus remarked.

  “Indeed,” Grafton agreed. “That thought must have occurred to him.”

  “If he does, make damn sure none of the blood splatters on the CIA.”

  “I’ll do my best, Reem.”

  The chief of staff called the president, asked for some time. An hour later, Kiddus and Jake were in the Oval Office.

  President Vaughn Conyers listened to both men as they laid out what they knew. Didn’t ask a single question.

  When Kiddus had run down and Grafton had nothing more to say, the president remarked, “Boiled down, we don’t know anything for a proven fact.”

  “Anything about where the money went,” Kiddus said.

  “The Russians…” the president mused. He ruffled the stack of computer printouts that Kiddus had brought with him. “These Russian banks… the Kremlin is in this, to the roots of their hair.”

  He paused. “Until we know more,” he said after a moment, “I don’t know what we can do except let the FBI investigate here and the CIA abroad.” He eyed the two men sitting across his desk. “Keep me advised. And take this stuff with you. Don’t leave it lying around, Reem.”

  Back in the chief of staff’s office, Kiddus handed the stack to Grafton. “I don’t want this paper in the building. Take it back to Langley with you.”

  They shook hands and Grafton left.

  Back at Langley, Grafton called in his vice-director, Jack Norris. Norris was the consummate intelligence pro, and no doubt he thought he should be the director of the agency; he might even make it when Grafton retired or got fired. He still had most of his hair and large, sleepy eyes.

  “We need to find a way to get a peek into these Russian banks that sent wire transfers to Estonia,” Grafton told him. “We can’t do it alone—we don’t have the assets. We’re going to have to get NSA involved.” NSA was the National Security Agency, which had the largest collection of main-frame computers and cryptographers on the planet located in their facility at Fort Meade, Maryl
and, between Washington and Baltimore.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Norris said. “I’ve already been downtown to see Robert Levy. I gave him what we have. He looked at me as if I had brought him a dead skunk to decorate his office.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “He got a call from someone at Justice while I was sitting in his office. I figured out he was talking to Justice from what he said—he didn’t enlighten me.”

  “Not Levy,” Grafton muttered.

  “Jake, don’t expect big news from Levy any time soon. You know how the Hooverites operate: they hold their cards close to their shirts. Given their druthers they won’t tell anyone anything until they have some cases ready for Justice, then Levy will hold a press conference.”

  Grafton thought that if Levy thought he could sit on this stinking mess while the bureau did business as usual, he was in for some unpleasant surprises, probably very soon. “We live in a deep, dark swamp,” he said to Norris. “The people the FBI talk to will talk—they all have congressmen and senators. And the FBI will leak. The story will be on the street by tomorrow morning.” He waved a hand. “But all that’s beyond our control. We’ll leave the FBI to the tender mercies of the Attorney General, the White House, the press, and the Congress. Go stimulate the guys and gals at Fort Meade. If you get any pushback, have the director call me.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  When Norris left, Jake asked the department head for Southern Europe to come see him. Tommy Carmellini was going to need a lot of help, and soon.

  Chapter Six

  The story was on the street in America the following day, as Jake Grafton predicted, yet there wasn’t much to it. A Swedish branch bank in Estonia had had a lot of Russian money pass through it. The Swedish banking authorities had decided on a line: Rogue Russians had tried to manipulate a small branch bank in Estonia, which was being shut down. Oversight would prevent future occurrences of this nature.

  Of course the Russians would deny everything when they were asked, though no government on the planet had yet asked. One reason for this was that the amounts involved were still Swedish secrets. Another reason was that the governments of Europe, the U.K., and the United States suspected they needed to know more—a lot more—before they lit fuses in their own bailiwicks or bearded the Russian bear. The FBI cited its well-known rule that it would not comment upon ongoing investigations, or even admit it was investigating. The White House Press Secretary said she had nothing to add. The media cycled on to other, juicer topics, such as illegal immigration and the antics of the elected ones. After all, the media had cars, beer, and pharmaceuticals to sell.