The Color of Night

by David Lindsey

  “They’re in a messy spot. It’s not the first time.”

  Their dinner came, and they ate for a few minutes.

  “He said you were with a woman.” Ariana wiped her mouth with her napkin, a slight smile remaining on her lips.

  Strand nodded.

  “You know her . . . well?”

  “She’s not involved.”

  “And she’s beautiful.”

  “I think so.”

  “You, of all men, would know. You have her tucked away?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is she taking all this?”

  “She knows that Schrade knows about her. She’s afraid, but she’ll deal with it. She’s gutsy.”

  “Then she’s in for the duration.”

  Strand nodded. Ariana couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Okay, Harry, what was Bill talking about?”

  He told her. Everything. In detail, from the strange appearance of the videotape of Romy’s death up to the present moment. She listened, stunned, mesmerized, her own anguish rekindled and intensified as she grasped a new understanding of the dimension of hatred they were dealing with and of the immediacy of its threat.

  Without speaking, she reached for the bottle of wine and poured some more into both their glasses. Her hand trembled. Her face was drawn. As she sipped her wine her eyes remained on him across the rim of the glass. When she spoke she had to clear her throat.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked. “What do we have to do?”

  “Okay,” he said, pushing aside his plate and pulling his glass over in front of him. “I have some ideas. First, we know the FIS isn’t going to walk away from this. Bill’s talk about this being a stalemate was standard FIS bullshit. They don’t see this as a stalemate at all. They see themselves as having lost. They can’t, and won’t, tolerate that. This is by no means the end of it for them. Plus, as long as Schrade’s alive he’ll be trying to find us. The FIS can’t do anything about him. That’s it. It’s as much a fact as gravity.”

  “Harry, before you go any further . . .” She was hesitant. “Have you considered trading the money for our lives?”

  “Who are you going to trust with that kind of arrangement? Wolf? The FIS? The money’s our only protection. Take it away, we’re dead.”

  “How in the hell are we going to keep it and live any kind of normal life?”

  “We can’t make the money go away, but maybe we can make Schrade and the FIS go away.”

  Ariana stared at him blankly. “Oh, I see. You are grasping at straws.”

  “No, we can do it.”

  Ariana shook her head. “Maybe you can, but I’m not going to be able to help you.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t believe in magic.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m too practical. I told you, Madame Sosotris never made anything happen for me.”

  “Magic hasn’t got anything to do with it,” Strand said. “Cold, hard reality will make him disappear.”

  “Disappear. You make it sound easy.”

  “No, it sure as hell won’t be easy. Let me give you some additional background. After we broke up our operation and we all scattered in different directions, Schrade continued working with the FIS for another three and a half years. Then he abruptly cut it off. The FIS claims it doesn’t know why.”

  “That’s right. Howard wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Here’s what I think happened. About eighteen months ago Schrade discovered the money was missing. I can’t imagine what must have gone wrong. I don’t know. But he went crazy, thought the FIS was in on the scam, and broke off his longtime arrangement with them. I don’t have any doubt that he probably went to work with someone else, the Germans, the British, the French. Maybe all three of them. In the meantime, he put his best computer and accounting brains to work trying to find out where it all went. They discovered who before they discovered how. The first thing he did was find Romy and me. He killed her.

  “No one else died. Why did he wait another year before coming after the rest of us?” He stopped. “I didn’t even suspect Schrade in Romy’s death. That’s incredible, I know. I just didn’t.”

  Ariana hadn’t moved. She didn’t respond.

  “After killing Romy in an initial burst of anger,” Strand went on, “Schrade realized it was a terrible mistake. He may never get the money if he kills all of us. In fact, he probably killed his best prospect for ever getting it all back. He spent the next year trying to track it all down.”

  Strand stopped and sipped his wine.

  Ariana slowly shook her head. “You lost me,” she said.

  “The fact of the matter is, he can’t get it back. Any of it. It’s impossible. When Schrade finally realized that, he turned his attention to dealing with the rest of us. He’s swinging his scythe in a wider arc. Anyone near me, he kills. Anything I own, he destroys.”

  “Is that true? The money can’t be recovered?”

  “In a sense, yes,” he said. “It’s gone.”

  CHAPTER 22

  “Explain it to me,” Ariana said bluntly, lighting another cigarette. “Where the hell is my money coming from?”

  Strand nodded. There was no reason to keep it to himself any longer, nothing to be gained from it, nothing to be lost by it. He was the only one left who knew how it had been done.

  “The money we stole from Schrade was money that was in the process of being laundered, money that was being ‘streamed’ through a byzantine scheme of ‘filters,’ fake companies, banks, investment programs, markets, commodities, everything. Romy’s job, as it had been for nearly four years, was to determine at what point Schrade’s dirty money had passed through enough ‘filter entities’ to keep it from getting traced back to Schrade’s enterprises. When it was clean, she had to move it into the mainstream.

  “The dirty money was passing through the ‘stream’ at an erratic rate, but it was averaging about forty-four million a month. Romy’s plan was to divert a portion of this money in midstream and move it into another set of filters that ultimately spat out the clean money into our own legitimate entities. Romy and Clymer got together and created a . . . I don’t know, a financial labyrinth, a highly complex web of legal mechanisms. They worked furiously for nearly a month on it, after Romy had already spent over a month designing the concept. It was all done by computer and then backed up by tons of forged paperwork. That’s what you and Claude were shuttling back and forth to Dennis Clymer.

  “When the money came out of our filters, we had the problem of isolating it.”

  “Isolating it?”

  “From Schrade. I wanted to make sure that if he ever discovered what we’d done, he could never actually get his hands on the money we’d taken away from him. Six hundred and two million. . . .”

  Ariana’s mouth dropped open, an involuntary hiss of astonishment escaping her throat. She had never known the exact amount. She had only calculated backward from her own income. It had not come up to $602 million.

  “My God,” she said, “my God.”

  “Well, that’s a big hit,” Strand acknowledged. “I knew how Wolf would react to that. He’d easily spend that much, and more, to get it back. Even if he couldn’t get it back, he wouldn’t want us to have it, either. The thought of having that kind of money stolen from him would be intolerable. Especially considering who was responsible for it.

  “I wanted the money to be integrated into a legitimate legal framework subject to U.S. laws. I didn’t trust an EU country to resist the kind of pressure that Schrade was capable of putting on them if it eventually came to that.”

  He paused for a drink and looked out the window. Lake Geneva reflected the lights of the city around the harbor, a double image of the glitter and fantasy of a Swiss dream. He turned back, looking first into his wineglass for a moment and then at Ariana.

  “What did you do with it?” she asked.

  “I told Clymer to open lots of accounts in various banks in Zurich and here in Geneva. Out
of those accounts I arranged for us to begin receiving payments in equal amounts, an arbitrary figure I came up with to provide us incomes up until we stopped the operation. These payments were sent to our private accounts, your Cyprus account, Romy and me in our bank in Vienna, then Houston, Claude’s bank here in Geneva, and Clymer’s own bank in San Francisco.

  “When it was all over, when we shut down the operation, we had taken a total of six hundred and two million from Schrade. I instructed Clymer to take twenty percent of the total. That came to one hundred and twenty million. I had him split it four ways and open four accounts at four separate banks in Zurich. That put thirty million in each of our four accounts. I say four because Romy and I shared a single account. I instructed the banks not to touch the principal. Every month I had them send to each of our private accounts the interest off the thirty million principal.”

  Ariana was listening closely, nodding. “That’s right. I’ve been getting one million two hundred thousand every year.”

  “That’s our hazard pay,” Strand said.

  “So,” Ariana said, her glass paused halfway to her lips, “what happened to the other eighty percent, the four hundred and eighty-two million?”

  “I set up a series of charitable trusts that established and administered schools and hospitals in the very countries where Schrade’s drug and arms business have caused so much miserable hell.”

  He looked out at Lake Geneva again, this time focusing on the darkness rather than the lights.

  “As each of us dies,” he said, turning back to her, “the principal that’s been throwing off the interest from our four accounts reverts back to the original amount until, when the last of us dies, the entire six hundred and two million will be back together again. Managed correctly, that money can do a lot of good in perpetuity. Romy and I spent a lot of time and thought researching this, putting it together. The trusts are sound. All the legal strings have been neatly tied. The trusts can’t be dismantled, not by anyone, not at any time. Everything’s in place . . . to stay.”

  Strand drank some of the Bordeaux. It was very good. He let it stay in his mouth a moment, then swallowed it. A smile slowly softened Ariana’s mouth and eyes.

  “This is some kind of atonement, is that it, Harry?”

  “I didn’t put a name on it,” he said, shifting in his seat. “I just did it. I did have thoughts of poetic justice.”

  “Schrade can’t get to this?”

  “It’s way past him now. It’s gone.”

  Ariana shook her head. “My God. You get away with over half a billion dollars . . . and you give it all away.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. The crowd in the restaurant had diminished; only a few diners remained, quiet groups, talking softly, intimately.

  Ariana ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. She looked tired.

  “Okay. Then tell me this,” she said, leaning forward on the table. “How the hell are we going to stay alive? Tell me how reality is going to make Schrade disappear.”

  “Yeah.” Strand nodded. “We’ve got to talk about that.” But he was hesitant. “Look, it’s been about three days now since the videotape turned up in Rome. Obviously Schrade knew where I was three days ago. I did everything I could think of to lose his people. I think I’m okay now.” He paused. “What about you?”

  She looked at him. “That’s blunt.”

  “We’re both going to have to do some traveling,” he said. “We’re going to be carrying documents, documents I can’t afford to lose.” He paused again. “I just need to know how you feel about it. If you have any question in your own mind that you aren’t absolutely clean, I need to know. I can make other arrangements.”

  “Here’s my thinking, Harry,” she said, her voice a little strained. “If Schrade knew where you were in Rome, and if he wanted you dead, why didn’t he kill you then? Apparently he chose not to kill you in Rome. So, it could be that he knows where you are now, too, and is still choosing not to kill you. Maybe your evasive capabilities aren’t as expert as you would like to believe.” She smoked. “Just a thought.” She smoked again.

  “Now, as for myself,” she went on. “I have no reason to believe that Schrade would not kill me if he knew where I was. He didn’t let Clymer live. Nor, I believe, Claude. I have no reason to think he would have different plans for me. So, if I’m alive now, perhaps it’s because he doesn’t know where I am. That, I would think, would speak well enough for my evasive skills.”

  By the time she had finished, Ariana’s tone had grown decidedly testy. Strand had to concede that she had a point. He was glad to see that her Greek ire was still alive, that it hadn’t been completely cowed, as he first had thought when he’d talked with her and Howard at the Café Central. He grinned at her.

  “Touché,” he said.

  “Yes.” She arched one eyebrow. “Indeed.”

  “Okay, look, tomorrow I’m going to a bank here where I’ve been keeping documents that I set aside during the years I worked with Schrade. We’ll get together again, I’ll give you the documents you’ll need, and tell you then what I’ve got in mind.”

  “Fine. Where do we meet?”

  “Not a public place this time. Your hotel or mine. We’re going to need some time together, most of the day.”

  Ariana picked up her purse and began looking inside. She took out a key and laid it on the table, shoving it over to Strand.

  “My hotel room. The Metropole.”

  “I’ll call you when I leave the bank,” he said, putting the key in his pocket. “Do you have an e-mail address?”

  They exchanged addresses, repeating them for each other several times. They didn’t dare write them down. She didn’t even ask him where he was staying or where he would be when he left Geneva. She knew he wouldn’t tell her.

  “I probably won’t get there until late in the afternoon,” he said. “I’ve got to copy these documents . . . and there are photographs . . . and tapes that’ll have to be duplicated. I’m sure I can get all of that done somewhere near the banking district, but it’ll take most of the day.” He paused. “If for some reason we get separated, if something happens and you aren’t there when I come, or if I don’t show up, leave Geneva. I’ll do the same. We’ll check in with each other on the Net.”

  Nothing remained to be said. Finally Strand smiled and held up his glass in a silent toast. They drank the last of the wine, looking at each other.

  “I was glad to see you, Harry,” Ariana said, putting down her glass. “When I saw your face looking at me across that room of unfamiliar faces, everything seemed possible again. Christ, it was bleak before that.”

  “This’ll work out,” Strand said.

  “It has to, doesn’t it?”

  Strand nodded. “Yeah. It has to.”

  They looked at each other for a moment longer, then Ariana reached for her purse and stood up. She put the strap over her shoulder, then leaned over and put her hand flat against the side of his face, holding it gently as she kissed him softly on the lips.

  “Good-bye, Harry Strand,” she said.

  • • •

  When he returned to the Beau-Rivage, Strand had an e-mail message from Mara.

  Up and running. Waiting.

  M.

  CHAPTER 23

  BANJA LUKA, BRITISH SECTOR, BOSNIA

  The short, stocky Serb sat on an upturned gas tin under a thick poplar tree at a farmhouse on the southern edge of the city. A spring rain had soaked the countryside for the past week, and the Serb’s shoes were caked with dark, gummy mud. So were the boots of his two companions, one of whom sat on the rim of a huge, cracking tractor tire while the other, standing, had propped one foot on the edge of a wooden trough as he leaned forward, his forearms crossed on his raised knee. Gnats hovered around them in humid air that was rich with the odors of damp earth and weeds.

  The Serb’s two companions were brothers in their late thirties, farmers who seemed to be making only a scrabbly living o
ff their small acreage. Around them was a mud-spattered stucco farmhouse with tiles missing from its roof, a derelict barn that had not seen meaningful use in nearly five years, a rusted-out flatbed Soviet-era truck, a twenty-year-old Russian tractor that had not been able to run for seven years.

  “It’s the same stuff we used on the general in Biha,” the Serb said. “Almost the same. Treat it the same way. I want you to get it out of the British sector, into Croatia, to Split.”

  “Just the explosives. Not the detonators?” the standing man asked.

  “Just the explosives.”

  “And how much of it?”

  “It would fit in a lunch pail.”

  “Can we take it apart?”

  “I don’t care how you do it, so long as you deliver to the address in Split the exact amount that I give you here.”

  Both men nodded.

  The short man reached into his shirt pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to the brother sitting on the tractor tire.

  “That’s the address in Split,” he said. “Go there between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. Any even-numbered day. But only that hour. The woman there will take your package. She will open it and verify the amount. If all is fine, she will tell you where to go to get your money.”

  “That day? Then?”

  “Yes, that very moment.”

  The two brothers exchanged looks. They had fought with the short man in Bihaand Mostar in 1992 and 1993 and had learned to trust him in a soldierly way before they were shipped to another front of the war. After they had all left the army, he had looked them up. This was the fourth smuggling job he had brought to them. So far, it was the most simple. And the most lucrative. And the most risky.

  The brother standing with his leg on the trough turned to the short man.

  “All right. When do we get the explosive?”

  “Right now. I have it in the car.” He stood up. “But I have to know when you think you can deliver it. The woman has to know within one or two days.”

  “Three days. We can get it to Split in three days.”

  “Fine.”