Cold Winter Rain

by Steven Gregory

  “Bankers enjoy their acronyms almost as much as geeks do.”

  “Bankers are geeks. At least, Swiss bankers are. I don’t believe you could say that about, say, Atlanta bankers, or even the so-called investment bankers at the likes of Goldman Sachs. The investment banks do keep a few pet geeks about, though.

  “Anyway, the ZIRP and the bond purchases have done little good except for the beginnings of a stock market bubble and the continuation of the Treasury bond bubble. Banks don’t want to make risky loans, and the contraction of real estate prices reduced loan demand. But at some point, one of two things will happen. The Fed will decide it has to end its bond purchases and the ZIRP policy, or the markets, fearing inflation caused by all the money the Fed has printed, or maybe in the face of actual inflation, will take the ZIRP out of the Fed’s hands. Either way, interest rates will rise.”

  “Okay. So what happens then?”

  “Game over, my friend. In the past, the Fed could subdue inflation by raising interest rates. Paul Volcker, when he was Fed chairman back in the eighties, is the meta-example. He raised the federal funds rate up to twenty per cent. My bankers think that without Volcker the United States might have shot into hyperinflation back then.

  “But now the huge U.S. debt creates a ceiling on the Fed’s ability to raise interest rates. At some point on the interest rate curve, neither the United States nor Japan will be able to pay the interest on their debt. So if the Fed fails to raise interest rates as Volcker did, they risk hyperinflation. And if the Fed were to raise interest rates Volcker-style, at some point the U.S. and Japan will be unable to afford interest payments.

  “Either way, the dollar and the yen will collapse, the world will have to invent a new reserve currency, and the United States will no longer be a worldwide empire.”

  “There’s a silver lining in there somewhere.”

  “Yes, Slate, but not for most U.S. citizens. For them a standard of living maybe eighty per cent lower is their destiny sometime in this century.”

  “What’s the solution?”

  “For me? No dollar or yen-denominated assets. Not a problem for a Swiss. For you? Not so easy. If you can, own other currencies and hard assets. Gold.”

  “Somehow I knew you’d eventually utter that four-letter word.”

  He shrugged. “I’m Swiss. The Swiss appreciate gold because it’s politically neutral. Like us.”

  The sun began to peek over the horizon toward the Perdido Pass, where the Perdido bridge connected Alabama Point to Florida Point and divided the panhandle between Alabama to the west and Florida to the east. The rising sun streaked the sky in oranges and yellows and seemed to mock the apocalyptic vision of the gloomy Bahnhofstrasse bankers Moeller had related. See? I’m still rising every morning, it said.

  “So, what’s this business with your boat all about?” Moeller asked.

  “Not sure yet. If I gave you some encrypted files on a computer disk, could you decrypt them?”

  “Depends. What type of encryption? How robust?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure that they’re encrypted. The files are on a thumb drive. You can’t get to the files without a password.”

  “You don’t have the password?”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you think the files are encrypted?”

  “The person who gave me the memory stick said so.”

  “Does this have anything do to with the visit to your boat?”

  I nodded. “Probably.” I gave Moeller a sketch of the Kramer case. I left out the message typed on my laptop.

  Moeller was silent for a couple of minutes. A gull flew over the boat and settled on top of a light pole at the end of the catwalk that ran alongside Moeller’s boat slip.

  The bird regarded us sleepily. Hoping to steal some food, no doubt, but not energetic enough to try.

  “How did the soccer goalie – Akilah? – how did she know the files were encrypted if they are password-protected?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know whether she mixed up the terms.”

  “The possibilities are: first, the Kramer girl told her the files were encrypted. Second, the Kramer girl told her the password, and she opened the folder but discovered the files were encrypted.”

  “She told me the files were encrypted.”

  Moeller ignored me. “Third, Akilah knows the decryption code and the password. Fourth… .”

  “She knows what’s in the files.”

  “Right you are, Mr. Slate. And they say people from Alabama are dumb.”

  “Sometimes that observation is correct.”

  Moeller squinted across the rim of his coffee cup. A slice of the sun had just appeared over the horizon in his line of sight through the forest of masts in the docks. “Slate.”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me the thumb drive. I will run the password prompt through a brute-force password cracker I have on my computer here in the boat. If we get lucky, that will give us access to the files, but they may still have to be decrypted.”

  The thumb drive was in my pants pocket. I handed it to Moeller and returned to my boat.

  I spent the rest of the morning doing a few of the endless chores of sailboat maintenance and second-guessing my decision to ask Moeller to spend time with the thumb drive. I needed to get back to Birmingham. And I needed a long talk with the goalkeeper for the Alabama Southern women’s soccer team.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Moeller’s password program was not a success. With more time, he told me, he was sure it would work. For reasons clear to both of us, though, I could not leave the device with him, and he reluctantly returned it.

  After a quick lunch, seafood gumbo, cole slaw, saltine crackers, and iced tea, at Hemingway’s, I packed the Escort with more clothes, the laptop, and, this time, my little Ruger LCP, a potent gun about the size of a cellphone that clicked into the Fobus holster strapped to my ankle.

  I swapped the Glock .45 for my older Glock, the model 17. The model number of the Glock pistol referred to the magazine capacity. With seventeen rounds in the magazine of the Glock, I hoped not to need the Ruger.

  But if I did need it, I wanted it, full magazine inserted, on my ankle, not in the locker in my boat.

  At the WalMart in Orange Beach, I bought two boxes of ammunition, a six pack of lemon-flavored bottled water, and spare flashlight batteries.

  I got back in the Escort and drove to the airport, through the gate and onto the ramp, and parked the car in front of my hangar.

  I transferred my stuff to the Albatros and drove the courtesy car back to its usual parking spot behind the FBO office. When I tossed the keys to the girl at the counter, she gave me some grief for keeping the courtesy car overnight.

  Somehow I doubted that the occupants of the new Falcon on the ramp missed the Escort much.

  The Southeastern weather was holding, with a cold wedge of higher-pressure air pushing away the rain a little longer. I could avoid filing IFR and to save time decided not to file a VFR flight plan.

  VFR flight plans serve one purpose — to allow Air Force and Civil Air Patrol teams to make informed decisions regarding search and rescue after a crash. I would remain in contact with air traffic control facilities throughout the flight, mooting any need for a flight plan.

  In Birmingham I picked up another rental and drove to the Tutwiler. I spent only enough time there to transfer my bags and see if anyone besides the maid had been in the room.

  The hotel room safe no longer seemed the most secure option for the memory stick or the handwritten notes.

  Down in the lobby, I told the concierge that I needed to place a couple of items in the hotel safe. The day concierge, a chunky but efficient-looking woman in her mid-forties, took my five-dollar tip and led me through a warren of offices and corridors behind the front desk to an elevator just large enough for two. We descended slowly to the basement.

  The elevator door opened on a scene out of the 1950s.
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  In a large room floored in peeling gray linoleum sat a dozen metal and glass cubicles. I could see the heads of workers in a few.

  At one end of the room, the concierge opened a door to a small room no larger than a walk-in closet. The concierge smiled slightly, stepped into the room, and closed the door.

  Fifteen seconds later, the door swung open, and the concierge motioned me in. Inside the room, taking up essentially the entire space, sat a combination safe with peeling beige paint. The safe door was open. Lining the safe were perhaps a hundred lockboxes of various sizes. The concierge opened a box and left the key in the lock.

  I removed the memory stick from my pants pocket and the notes from my jacket and placed them inside the box. The concierge closed the box and handed me the key.

  “You’re all set,” she said. “Box number is on the key.” She pointed to the key.

  “Right,” I said and followed her back to the lobby.

  In the car on I-65 South on the way to Alabama Southern, I called Sally Kronenberg’s office but got a recording. I didn’t leave a message.

  I didn’t want to have to go through Miller to speak with Akilah, but without the coach I wasn’t sure how to find the girl. I’d just have to do what I usually did – figure it out as I went along.

  At the campus gate, I got lucky. The guard on duty recognized me and had apparently decided I was harmless. He nodded as I coasted by.

  I drove to the athletic complex and parked out front.

  If Akilah knew the password and the encryption key, I’d have to convince her to give them to me. Both seemed unlikely; why would she give me the drive without the keys to the information?

  And, whether she’d opened the document or not, the people who’d left the message on my laptop might figure out or force Kris to tell them that she’d given Akilah the memory stick. Akilah might be in danger.

  Today the athletic complex was humming. On the ground floor through tall glass windows, I could see trainers working with a dozen or so male athletes in the weight room. In the lobby a couple of young women, probably athletes on partial scholarships, were giving a tour to a busload of high-school kids.

  Upstairs, the small anteroom outside the coach’s office was occupied this time. The young woman at the desk had the shoulders of a swimmer. “Help you?” she asked.

  I gave her my best smile. “Only if you can tell me where I can find Coach Kronenberg.”

  “Are you Mr. Slate?” she said.

  “How did you know? Did I forget to take the name tag off my jacket?”

  “Hi, Mr. Slate. I’m Alison. Coach K described you. And she told me to come find her if you came by. She’s down on the soccer field. Do you know where it is? Just behind the building?”

  “I’ve seen it. Thanks, Alison.”

  “No problem.”

  Sally Kronenberg wore sweats, an elastic band with an athletic shoe logo holding back her hair. She stood in front of a portable soccer goal on the practice field.

  Nine girls, most of them in shorts and sweatshirts with the Alabama Southern logo on the front, were lined up fifteen yards in front of the goal. As each girl came to the front of the line, a student assistant surrounded by soccer balls rolled one out, and the player rocketed the ball toward the goal.

  Each player got three kicks. I watched all twelve have a turn. The coach didn’t stop every shot. But she didn’t miss many either.

  When the penalty-kick drill was over, the players moved on to passing drills, and Sally Kronenberg walked over to me. “Hi,” she said. “How long have you been watching?”

  “Long enough,” I told her.

  “Long enough to see I’m not the age of these girls anymore. Normally one of our goalkeepers would stay in goal for that drill, but Akilah is not here today, and – you know about Kris.”

  “Do you know why Akilah didn’t show?”

  “No. I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Yeah. A little, for Akilah especially, but these are voluntary workouts. It’s offseason.”

  “If it’s possible, I need to speak with Akilah again.”

  “What’s up?”

  I outlined the events at the marina but left out the memory stick and the encryption.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go find her. I hope you don’t mind if I shower first.”

  I followed Sally Kronenberg into the sports complex and waited for her in the lobby in an overstuffed chair.

  The high-school kids had completed their tour. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breath while I recalled some of the details in the materials Kramer had left with me.

  Most of the documents were from the fraudulent oil lease files Kramer worked as assistant AG. Some of the names on the files were familiar: Monetto, Brunini, Marcello.

  Stuffed in an unmarked file folder in the back of the document case were clippings from a recently notorious punitive damages case, State of Alabama v. ExxonMobil. In ExxonMobil, the state had alleged, and ultimately proved to a jury, that Exxon was underreporting its take from offshore gas wells to reduce the royalties it was obliged to pay to the Alabama government.

  As usual in these cases, the three-and-half-billion-dollar punitive damages award enjoyed wide coverage in the media. The Alabama Supreme Court’s reversal of the award merited fifteen seconds on CNBC and a two-inch AP story buried deep the pages of the newspapers that bothered to print it.

  A law firm in Mobile had represented the state in the ExxonMobil case. Nothing in the file indicated Kramer’s law firm participated.

  And I’d found precious little to connect the old files to the present.

  Sally Kronenberg came down to the lobby in a gray wool skirt, red silk blouse, and a gray wool blazer. She wore black pumps and one thick gold chain around her neck. She carried a black raincoat over her arm.

  My eyes must have told her I’d noticed.

  She shrugged. “I’m going out tonight. Dinner. Then a basketball game on campus.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She smiled a little, one corner of her mouth turning up.

  “Well, listen, if you don’t have time for this, you don’t have to help me do my job.”

  “No, it’s still early. The game is not until seven-thirty.”

  She shrugged again. “Well. I don’t know where to start to look for Akilah any more than you do. I’m sure she’s fine. I called her cell phone from my office, but I just got her voice mail. I left a message and asked her to call. In the meantime, I suppose we could check her dorm. But it’s getting close to time for the athletes to have supper. They eat together in the dining hall at the dorm quadrangle, most nights.”

  “So we should check there first.”

  The coach nodded. “Right. If she’s not there we can check her room.”

  We pushed through the doors of the athletic complex. “I have to lock up,” she said. “We’re the last to leave.”

  She produced a key, locked the front door, and turned to gesture toward the sidewalk paralleling the building. “We can walk,” she said. “It’s always faster than driving here. It’s near the coffee shop where we were before.”

  Inside the dining room, Coach Kronenberg approached two tables of boisterous girls eating pizza.

  I hung back at the entrance, but one sweep of the room told me that Akilah Ziyenge wasn’t dining with her fellow athletes tonight.

  Several students glanced toward me. Somehow I didn’t think they mistook me for a student.

  After a couple of minutes, Sally Kronenberg came back to where I was standing. “They don’t know where she is. A couple of girls thought she might be cramming for an exam in her room. The dorm is just outside and around the corner. Let’s go.”

  On the way, the coach glanced sideways at me and smirked. “One of the girls asked if you were my date.”

  “Too bad I’m not,” I said without thinking.

  “Think so?”

>   I shook my head. “Sorry. Not really.”

  “Another girl said you were better looking than the guy they saw me with last time.”

  “You do have intelligent athletes here, don’t you?”

  “We try.”

  “So, am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “Is she right?”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” She smiled and looked at me sideways again. “Maybe so.”

  Coach Kronenberg waved her faculty identification card in front of a sensor to unlock the front door at the red brick three-story dorm. Inside, a young man wearing some type of identification card on a chain around his neck stepped out of the hall advisor’s office. He recognized Coach Kronenberg but gave me a hard look. He was a kid and hadn’t practiced as long as I had, so he had to look back at the coach.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  “We need to go up to see Akilah Ziyenge,” Coach Kronenberg told him.

  “Sure, you can go on up, Coach,” said the kid. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen her all day. But, uh, who’s he?” He indicated me with a small movement of his head.

  “My name is Slate,” I said.

  “Just Slate?”

  “Mr. Slate.”

  Coach Kronenberg shook her head. “Mister Slate is with me. He’s – he’s working with the police on a matter involving a student here.”

  The kid looked skeptical, but he was out of his weight class. “Well sure, Coach, y’all can both go on up. Say hello for me.”

  The suite, 316, was on the third floor. The elevator opened onto a long narrow corridor. 316 was one door from the north end.

  Coach Kronenberg knocked on the door to 316. There was no answer.

  I reached around her and knocked, harder. Again, there was no response.

  Coach Kronenberg turned the doorknob, and the door opened.

  She looked at me. “I guess the girls sometimes leave these doors unlocked,” she said.