A Calculated Risk

by Katherine Neville

  “I have a few suggestions along those lines.…” I began.

  “Yes, I’ve a few of those of my own,” he told me, his lips silencing any further talk.

  I wakened to the sound of the seabirds wheeling and screeching outside my window. The sky was a flat, brilliant white, and I saw three pelicans drift through the fog beyond the lace curtains. Tor wasn’t in bed, but I heard bumping and odd sounds in the hallway, as if a large object were being dragged along the stairs.

  Lying there in the rumpled quilts, I tried to understand the mélange of feelings I’d had since the night before. But I smiled when I realized that no matter what changes would result from all this, last night might well be the best Christmas gift I’d ever had. Georgian and Tor had been right when they’d called me a liar and hypocrite—I saw now I’d been both. All the running I’d done had been from myself. I could never escape from my feeling for Tor—it was kismet.

  Just then, Tor arrived. He smiled when he saw me sitting there in the torn remnants of my borrowed gown.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Get up—I’ve a surprise for you.”

  “What’s that all over your pajamas?”

  “Dirt,” he said, looking down at the mess. “Get out of bed and take off your clothes.”

  “Before coffee?” I laughed.

  “We’re going for a swim,” he informed me.

  “Is there a heated pool on this rock?”

  “Don’t be absurd—we’re on an island surrounded by water. We’re going for a dip in the bay.”

  “Pardon me, but I’ve recently checked my almanac, and discovered it’s Christmas Day. Maybe you’re going for a dip in the bay—but I’m not about to die of overexposure!”

  “You’ll never feel more alive,” he assured me. “I swim in the north Atlantic every Christmas morning. Even with all that fog of yours outside, this seems like a tropical paradise to me.”

  He yanked the covers away and pulled me out by the feet, kicking and protesting. Tossing me over his shoulder, he sprinted out the door and downstairs, and jogged across the lawn to the pier where our boat was tied. He leaped off the end with me in his arms and we hit the water.

  When the water enveloped me, I thought my entire system would crash. The shock of cold knocked the breath from me, filled my blood with ice, and drew my stomach into a knot. Tor was holding me in the lapping waves, to make sure I didn’t sink.

  “Breathe deeply—in and out very slowly,” he counseled me. “Let your body relax—that’s it. It seems a violent way to enter the water, but it’s soon over and far more gentle. How do you feel now?”

  “Sadist,” I gasped, flopping over onto my belly in the waves. “Your mind is sick—this is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me.” I felt I’d come down with lockjaw, my teeth were clenched so tightly.

  “You’re still too tense,” he said. “Loosen up, and you’ll love it.”

  “I hope you die of pneumonia,” I croaked.

  “If you’d swim a bit, you’d warm up faster,” he said.

  “Thanks for the advice. May your—” But he put his hand on my head and dunked me, so the cold seemed to penetrate even my brain. I came up sputtering, but at once realized that I felt suffused with warmth.

  “Gee, what happened?” I asked. “I feel warm and glowing, all of a sudden.”

  “Hypothermia,” he told me. “The first stage of shock—just before you freeze to death.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Truly—we mustn’t stay long, and must swim a bit, or it might be so. This water’s less than forty degrees.”

  We swam a lap around the little island. Then freezing all over—our wet nightclothes stuck to our bodies—we clambered up the rocky shore and fled across the lawn to the house.

  “Come in here,” said Tor, grabbing my arm as we went down the hall to the room. He dragged me through a door, and I then understood what all the racket had been about earlier.

  It was another bedroom—larger than mine—with a seating area and a vast bed built into the window bay beyond. On the back wall, facing the windows, was a huge fireplace with a roaring fire already crackling away, a giant log at center. Tor must have been up at the break of dawn and used superhuman effort to drag that thing up the stairs.

  He stripped off his dripping pajamas and threw them in a soggy pile on the floor. Then, picking me up in my tattered wet gown, he carried me to the bath, where a hot tub of bubbles was waiting, and lowered me in. My skin tingled and burned. Tor climbed in after me.

  The tub was a deep enameled affair, with lion’s claws for feet. The water went up to my nose when I sank down.

  “Did you enjoy that?” he asked with a smile.

  “I loved it,” I admitted. I held my nose and dunked to rinse the rubble from my hair. When I surfaced, I said, “But now I’m starving.”

  “I’ll make you some food—this place is fully stocked, as I arranged it to be when I phoned from New York. The owners offered to cook all our meals as part of the plan. But I was hoping to have some time alone with you to talk.”

  “I’m still recovering from last night’s little chat,” I told him with a grin.

  “I’m serious,” he assured me. “I was unprepared for the adventure you sprang on me the moment I walked in your door—and for what followed between us, too—though I confess that’s crossed my mind more than once in the last twelve years. I came here, in truth, to ask for your help. Did Lelia tell you what she’d done?”

  “She said you and Georgian were angry with her. She didn’t say why,” I replied.

  “Then I’d better explain. She took the bonds to Europe—but she didn’t establish the lines of credit I wanted—she took money out in the form of loans instead.”

  “It’s nearly the same,” I pointed out.

  “Except for the interest,” he agreed. “But we’re not yet ready to invest the money, and thanks to Lelia we have to start making payments now. That’s not all—she got lousy terms as well. With collateral worth two hundred cents on the dollar, we should have secured great rates. But Lelia signed contracts with prepayment penalties, too!”

  It looked pretty bad, I had to admit. With this kind of deal, he couldn’t give the money back and say it was all a mistake—nor could he repay the loans early, even if he wound up making a pile on his investments. If he tried to do either, he’d have hefty fines to pay.

  “What I don’t understand,” he was saying as he lathered his chest with soap, “is why she did it. She wouldn’t give me an answer. She kept saying ‘That will show them, that will show them’—as if she were trying to prove a point.”

  “Oh,” I said, blowing bubbles from my hand and sinking further down in the tub.

  “Oh?” said Tor. “Please fill me in—I assure you, nothing would surprise me at this point.”

  “It’s the Rothschilds, I think,” I told him. “Remember how angry she got when you spoke of them that night? Not the Rothschilds themselves—but German bankers—all bankers, maybe. The Daimlisch family were German bankers, too, you know. That’s how I knew them so well—through my grandfather. Lelia’s husband was the black sheep, the one who wanted to break away and do something new and different with his life.…”

  I paused as I realized this hit rather close to home. Tor was beaming broadly at this, my first hint that perhaps banking didn’t run through my blood like a genetic trait.

  “Daimlisch did well on his own,” I went on, “but when he was ill and dying, they needed money. Lelia went to Germany—against her husband’s advice and without his knowledge—and asked his family for a loan.”

  “They refused?” said Tor, surprised.

  “He’d gone his own way—turned his back on the bank; they didn’t give her beans. She hocked her jewelry—even today, I bet what she wears is mostly paste. She’s never recovered. I knew how she and Georgian felt about banking—that’s why I felt they’d leap into our bet!”

  “So she wanted to be rich in her own name—if only
for a day?” he said, raising his brow. “Perhaps that explains her cockeyed reasoning, but it doesn’t solve my problem. I’ve got millions in bonds out there, securing loans in Leila’s name. I’ll have to watch them like a hawk now, until they’re paid off—in the event any of them are called.”

  “Called?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “We were in a hurry during our printing,” said Tor. “I made the mistake of letting us copy some callable bonds as collateral—bonds that can be recalled whenever the issuer chooses to pay them off. The bearer—or owner—then has a fixed number of days in which to redeem them at face value.”

  “You’re afraid the real owners will take them from the vault to redeem them, and find out the ones they have are fakes,” I said.

  “That’s not all,” Tor told me. “So long as ours—the real bonds—are securing Lelia’s loans, those banks in Europe will expect us to send them in for redemption—they might even do it for us. To avoid that, we’d have to pay off our loan at great penalty—as Lelia has helpfully arranged—or get other collateral to secure it. We have no other collateral, unless we want to rob a bank.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “As long as I keep those wire transfers inside the bank—especially in fake accounts under other people’s names—I’m not technically doing anything illegal. At least, they’d have great trouble tracing anything to me. But to move my hard-earned ‘musical money’ outside of the bank in order to pay off real loans in another country—that’s a federal penitentiary rap!”

  “Your hard-earned money?” he said, raising his brow with a naughty smile. “It seems you’ve forgotten our little tryst at the data center last night. Who was it that saved your charming, dimpled bottom, my dear?”

  “I’m at your knees in gratitude,” I assured him, kissing a knee that had surfaced from the water, “and I’m also turning into a prune in this tub. I’ll take the list of your endangered securities and track them by computer, but I’ll have to clear it with my support crew—you met them last night—to see if they want to stick their necks out to actually cover your loans. By the way—what are you planning to use all that money for, if I may ask?”

  “I’m starting a tax haven—a place like Monaco or the Bahamas—where those who wish to engage in tax-free business transactions will be sheltered from such a burden. Our profit will be made by their having to deal in our currency and within the terms of our fiscal laws.”

  “What country will let you set up your own laws and currencies and operate as a tax haven?” I wanted to know.

  “None of them,” he said with a smile, getting out of the tub and toweling off. “So I suppose I must simply start my own country.”

  I wanted to ask a good deal more—but Tor said we’d discuss it later, and left the room. I turned on the shower as the tub drained, and shampooed all that bay dirt from my hair. Then I dried, wrapped myself in a fluffy towel, and went out to dry my hair beside the fire.

  Tor had been downstairs, and had set out coffee and steaming muffins with honey and butter, which smelled delicious. He was standing there, not wearing a stitch, stirring the fire as I came in from the bath.

  “I feel like a drowned rat,” I said, rubbing my hair.

  He turned and stared at me, wrapped in my towel, but he didn’t speak.

  “Granny—what big eyes you have.” I laughed.

  He set down the poker and came over to me. He peeled the towel away, and it dropped to the floor.

  “The better to see you with, my dear,” he murmured. He ran his hands over my body slowly, as if committing every inch to memory.

  “Granny, what big hands you have,” I said, feeling more than a little weak.

  “The better to feel you with, my dear,” he whispered, then he swept me into his arms like a bundle, and headed for the bed. “Aren’t you concerned about what comes next?” he asked naughtily.

  “Don’t flatter yourself—it’s not that big.”

  “Big enough.” He laughed, tossing me into the pillows.

  “Granny,” I said, “I believe it’s gotten bigger.”

  “The better to you-know-what you with, my dear,” he told me, leaping on top of me.

  “Why—I do believe you’re not my grandmother at all!” I cried in mock horror.

  “If you do such things with your grandmother, my dear—it’s no wonder you’ve been confused about your gender.”

  “I’m not confused—I know exactly which parts go where,” I assured him.

  “You certainly do,” he agreed as I crawled beneath the covers. “What do you think you’re doing there?”

  “Exploring some other parts—to find out what to do with them.” I was running my tongue across his flesh and he shuddered. “It tastes salty—like the sea,” I told him.

  “Is this a status report?”

  “Yes—I’ll send you updates from the field,” I said, moving lower.

  “My God—that feels wonderful … what are you …” but his voice trailed off.

  I felt his hands moving over my hair. Then he grasped it and pulled me up, his mouth over mine, crushing me to him ferociously. When I pulled away, his eyes burned darkly as he lay among the pillows. He was very pale in the fog-filtered light from the windows.

  “How can one want someone so much that it actually hurts?” he asked.

  “Perhaps this will hurt me more than it hurts you,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.”

  I pressed my lips to his stomach, and he shuddered. And then I moved over him as if he were a piece of sculpture I was learning by rote. I felt him stir and move beneath my hands and my lips as I memorized the hard, taut muscles that lay beneath the sheets. And at last, he moaned and cried out, and clutched at me again as his body stiffened and trembled and convulsed, and he lay still.

  I moved beside him and looked at him as he lay there with eyes closed, his strong, angular face, the ringlets of coppery hair on the pillow. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “What on earth did you do? That was magnificent,” he whispered, without moving.

  “Nasturtiums,” I said. When he looked confused, I added, “You taste like nasturtiums.”

  “A flower?” he smiled.

  “In Monet’s garden at Giverny,” I agreed, with a laugh.

  But he looked suddenly worried, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “There’s something I suppose I should tell you,” he said, looking up at me and studying my face. “I’m afraid it’s rather worse than the problem of Lelia and the bonds—certainly not part of my initial plan. Though I’ve known about it for quite some time, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

  “Is it something potentially dangerous?” I asked, sitting up, somewhat alarmed.

  “Very,” he admitted. “My dear, I love you.”

  MOVING MONEY

  No where so well developed as in the pants of the people, wealth ain’t.

  —Ezra Pound,

  THE CANTOS

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25

  Said al-Arabi was not going to Mecca this year.

  He was the wire transfer operator for National Commercial Bank in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On the afternoon of December 25, he was locked alone in the telex room of the bank, sending wires to banks in the United States to settle mortgage payments on Saudi real estate holdings there.

  Said al-Arabi sat before the telex machine and typed in the test key, which was masked—blacked out—by the machine as he entered it so no one looking over his shoulder might see the secret code.

  Then he entered the rest of the information needed to send the wire:

  From: National Commercial Bank, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Account Number: XXX

  To: Bank of the World, San Francisco, California, USA

  Pay To The Order Of: Escrow Account Number XXXX

  Amount: $50,000 and no/100

  Date: December 25, 19xx

  Message: For payment of commercia
l property, Lake

  Tahoe California

  End.

  Said al-Arabi hit the “send” button on his telex, releasing the wire into the network. Then he picked up the next wire transfer to enter from his stack.

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 28

  At eight-thirty Monday morning, Susan Aldridge arrived at the wire room of the Bank of the World. She was the first operator to come in after Christmas, and the room was still locked. Cursing her boss and colleagues for coming in late, and realizing that she would have to pick up the bulk of the heavy holiday volume, she went downstairs to the security desk and signed out for the key. They were probably recovering from too much Christmas cheer, she thought sullenly as she returned to open up the room for business.

  Susan powered up her terminal and checked her lipstick in a pocket mirror as she waited for the signal that it was ready to go. In a few minutes, she was able to pull up the first wire of the day:

  From: National Commercial Bank, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  Account Number: XXXX

  To: Bank of the World, San Francisco, California, USA

  Pay To The Order Of: Frederick Fillmore, Account Number XXXX

  Amount: $800 and no/100

  Date: December 25, 19xx

  Message: None

  End.

  That was strange, thought Susan. This was about the time of month the Saudi bank settled all its real estate mortgage payments in California, but they were for amounts far larger than eight hundred dollars. It hardly seemed worth sending a nine-dollar wire for so small an amount. But who knew with those Arabs? They were rolling in so much dough.

  The test key had been approved by the system, so she knew the transfer was legit. Susan typed in the data to prepare the debit and credit tickets, printed out the tickets, stamped them approved, clipped them together, and put them in her security envelope for the ten o’clock pickup.

  “Mine not to reason why,” she said aloud as she pulled up the next wire on her screen.

  By ten o’clock, the wire room was about half-full of operators who’d straggled in. The messenger arrived with her cart at the Dutch door.