Among Thieves: A Novel

Alex mumbled something unintelligible. He had to concentrate on walking to the stairwell leading to the bedrooms on the third floor. He had to actually pause once on the stairwell to get his breath. He turned into the first bedroom, and had just enough energy to remove his shoes before he laid back and more passed out than fell asleep.

Beck waited while Olivia recited instructions and authorization to the bank officer about closing another set of accounts. And for her to call back in and go through the process one more time. When she finally finished and took off the phone headset, he said to her, “Okay. Time for the last step.”

“Right,” said Olivia.

She took Alex’s place at the keyboard.

Beck, Alex, and Olivia had talked over various ways to get the money to a place where only they controlled it. Moving tens of millions of dollars between banks would set off too many alarms, mostly having to do with money laundering.

Olivia had come up with the solution, as Beck figured she would. As of now, all the money was in accounts they controlled, but all those accounts were still connected to Markov and Summit. Everything appeared to have been done from Summit’s offices, which was why all the transferring had gone so smoothly. It had all been done inside the HSBC branch Summit used in Cayman.

When they discussed how to get that money out of the Cayman bank, Olivia told Beck that traders running money often set up discrete accounts in order to segregate proceeds from various funds they might be running. She suggested they use one of the offshore banks that Summit already used for such accounts: the Krebs Bank in Belize. Belize was one of the banking centers Summit used for accounts they wanted as far off the radar as possible. It was even more discreet than Cayman banks.

She knew all of Summit’s account-opening procedures. And she knew Summit’s contact at the Belize bank. He had no idea she no longer worked at Summit, and was happy to hear from her and open a new account. The day before, Olivia set up a holding company called Montana Investments Series XI, an account only she and Beck knew existed.

It could be months before anybody at Summit realized the account existed, if ever. But setting up a hidden Krebs account inside Summit made it easy to wire transfer Markov’s money out of Summit’s HSBC account.

It also eliminated triggering any alarm bells because although the amounts transferred were in the tens of millions, the money was still technically inside Summit.

Olivia watched the clock as she prepared the wire transfer orders. They knew that the Cayman bank bundled their transfers twice a day: midday and just before bank closing hours at three o’clock. It was only eleven-fifteen. Plenty of time to get the wire transfers in place. But actually they worried it was too much time. They didn’t want the wire transfer orders sitting in a pile where someone might find them if Markov tried to get the bank to shut down any wire transfers while he tracked what happened to his money.

In the end, Alex had convinced Beck that hopscotching and waterfalling dozens of different amounts through the fifteen accounts made everything exponentially confusing. And then to transfer out the money to Belize in several different amounts from two different accounts would sufficiently camouflage the move. Olivia convinced Beck that the bank wouldn’t jeopardize alienating all the clients who were transferring money that day for the sake of one client.

Finally, they also spaced the time between orders so that their transfers would be mixed in with others.

Olivia finished faxing the last wire transfer order at 11:50 a.m. just under the noon deadline.

The last question was posed by Beck.

“If somebody at Summit suddenly noticed a hundred million plus on their books that wasn’t there before, how long would it take them to find the Montana Investments Series XI account?”

Olivia said it would be days or weeks. She knew it would take much less time, but she also knew she was going to mitigate that risk. As soon as she could, she would text the Krebs bank account number, ID, and password to Crane. As soon as he got free of Markov, he would arrange a transfer to their bank in Switzerland, almost certainly before anybody at Summit saw the money.

One more step, thought Olivia. One double cross, and I’m done.





82

“Oh really,” Crane said, pointing his Beretta at Markov. “You’re going to decide if I live.”

Markov turned to Ralph Anastasia, who was sprawled out on Crane’s couch. Harris sat at the battered dining room table, hands folded, just waiting. Williams, the South African, stood by the windows looking out onto Hubert Street as if he had nothing to do with any of them.

Anastasia raised a hand and said, “Our contract with you ended when Mr. Crane finished his job. He finished. You paid us. We’re done.”

Markov squinted at Crane, looked back at Anastasia. “How much did he pay you?”

“Quite a bit more than you, Mr. Markov.”

“To do what?”

“That’s between Mr. Crane and us. Like I said, our contract with you has ended.”

Markov looked over at his pistol on the worktable near Crane’s computers.

“Don’t even think about it, Leonard,” Crane said as he came out from behind his kitchen counter and casually walked to the table. He picked up the revolver and slipped it into his back pocket. Crane then placed his gun on his desk within reach, and sat down.

“Come on, Leonard, you didn’t think I was going to shoot you, did you? But just so you understand that I’m not the source of your fucking problems, how about you take a seat and answer a few questions?”

Crane motioned for Markov to sit at the worktable. Markov complied.

“So, here’s how it goes. If you think I had anything to do with taking your money, you’re crazy. But let’s examine the possibility.

“I know I didn’t take your fucking money. So let’s start there. If I didn’t, who did? Well, there aren’t a whole lot of choices, are there? At the top of the list is that fucking whore Olivia Sanchez. So first question, did you kill her like you were supposed to?”

Markov glared at Crane.

“I take that as a no. Which means you didn’t kill her protector James Beck, either. Did you?”

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