Among Thieves (50 page)

“James, come on, it's all there. What are we waiting for?”

“Hang on. Just a little longer.”

 

78

The moment Crane finished transferring the final five-plus million dollars, the moment the total amount of cash appeared in Markov's account, he pushed his Pininfarina Aresline desk chair back three feet from his keyboard, raised his hands, and announced, “Done.”

He stood up and stepped back, putting even more distance between him and his keyboard.

He started yelling and pointing at Markov, an act to distract him. “Nobody, fucking nobody, nobody, but me could have pulled that off. One hundred and sixteen big ones. Done. In the account. All cash. All yours.

“Don't thank me. Just fucking leave me alone. Take over. Go on. I'm out of it.”

Markov nodded and moved to retrieve Crane's chair. He sat down in front of Crane's computer.

Crane walked over behind Markov and said, “Hang on a second. You should close down the trading platform. And close down the brokerage account. Close all the doors behind you.”

Crane pointed, but made sure to stay away from his keyboard. None of this was necessary, but he wanted to buy more time for Beck.

Markov followed his instructions, until nothing showed on the monitors except for the one account.

Crane left and walked over to the kitchen area. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Stella Artois. He reached into his freezer and took out a frosted Pilsner glass.

He announced to no one in particular, “I've been looking forward to this for days.” He poured the beer slowly. The three ex-soldiers watched him from the living room. Crane didn't offer any of them a beer, and didn't intend to. He took a long, slow swallow. When he finished, he yelled out to Markov. “Leonard.”

Markov answered without looking up from the computer.

“What?”

“After you set up your wire transfer, don't close out the brokerage account. There's going to be money dribbling in there for a few days.”

“Don't bother me.”

But that's exactly what he was doing. Distracting Markov. What the fuck was going on, he wondered. Why was the money still in there?

 

79

Beck continued to stand behind Alex, his hand on Alex's shoulder, as if to physically hold him back. Alex had given up asking when to initiate the transfers. He was beginning to think Beck had another plan he hadn't told him about.

And then, Olivia spoke up. “Don't you think that should do it?”

Beck didn't respond. And then, without warning, he patted Alex's shoulder and said, “Go on. Hit it.”

For a second, Alex did nothing. And then, as if coming out of a trance, he and Olivia began their long rehearsed dance of money manipulation.

Alex began clicking the transfer tabs on each of his five prepopulated screens, first transferring the $36,327,170.00, and then continuing with each block of twenty million. The money began transferring from Markov's bank account into five accounts that were under Markov's name, but controlled by Alex.

Once the first set of transfers was complete, Alex switched computers. He had been working everything through Crane's computer, using his passwords and connection to the Cayman bank. Now that the first of his five bank accounts was funded, he severed all connections to Crane's computer. He and Olivia began waterfalling the money into another set of five accounts, and another set of five after that, varying the amounts to cover their trail.

As soon as the last chunk landed in the second set of five accounts, Olivia got on the phone, made a call through a phone-conference service that Summit Investing used, and started giving instructions to a bank officer to close out the first set of five accounts that they had just filled and emptied. While she talked via a headset, she fed confirming faxes into a fax machine they had already programmed the bank's phone numbers into.

As far as the bank officer knew, Summit was simply doing some housekeeping, closing out empty accounts.

Such maneuvers were not entirely unusual at a Grand Cayman bank. What would have been unusual was for the bank officer to ask what Summit was doing and why. It was entirely none of his business.

As soon as she finished closing out the first five bank accounts, she hung up, called back and got another bank officer on the line, and went through the same procedure for the second five accounts, while Alex was in the process of emptying everything into the fourteenth and fifteenth accounts. This was to make sure no single account ever showed a total that matched the money they had taken from Markov's original account.

She was falling far behind Alex, but neither he nor Beck cared. Alex was confident that the first set of closed accounts would create a good deal of work for anybody trying to find out where the money had gone. Each successive set of closed accounts would only add to the complexity.

Beck's eyes had never left the monitors once Alex and Olivia had started moving the millions. They were now ready for the last move. The final capture of over $116 million.

This last move would take the most time to accomplish. But if they managed it before anybody at the Cayman bank caught up with the money, they were home free.

Well, thought Beck, at least free to finish this goddamn mess once and for all.

 

80

Markov stared at the final figure on the screen for thirty seconds. The readout that confirmed that over $116 million were in his hands. Or about to be. The money was still in his cash account that Summit had set up for him in their Cayman bank. Markov wanted the money in a personal account, in a different bank, that only he controlled.

Crane stood motionless at his kitchen counter. He could see that the full amount was still in Markov's account. What the fuck was going on? All this time and trouble, all this risk, and Beck still hadn't made his move?

Markov took one more look at the screen, then picked up the computer case he'd placed near the worktable Anastasia's men had moved for him, and set the case down. He had already ordered the wire transfer. Now all he had to do was to confirm it by fax. Inside his computer case was a fax he had already prepared. All he had to do was fill in the final figure. As he wrote the number with his right hand, he picked up his cell phone and speed-dialed the Cayman bank with his left.

He yelled to Crane, who was already opening a second beer in his kitchen area.

“Where's your fax, Alan?”

Crane pointed to a built-in shelf above a row of half-height file cabinets along the wall opposite the kitchen. Amidst a bunch of electronic office equipment on the shelf was a high-speed fax machine set up on the far end.

“Make sure you put the page facedown,” Crane said with a smirk.

Markov was already talking to a bank officer, reciting his name and credentials and answering security questions as he fed the fax into Crane's machine and punched in the bank's fax number.

He told the officer the amount he wanted to wire transfer to a bank in Prague. He waited for the officer to confirm that he had received the fax. And he waited.

Crane stood behind his large kitchen counter watching Markov. He looked over at his computer monitor. He couldn't see the numbers from where he stood, but he could tell from the tone of the phone conversation that if Markov refreshed that screen, the account would show the money had disappeared.

He felt his stomach clench with a combination of fear and excitement. This was it. He would either survive the next few minutes, or he wouldn't.

He watched Markov waiting. He took another swig of his beer as he casually opened a drawer built into the long countertop work area.

He pushed aside the contents of the drawer as if he were looking for something, slid aside the top of a fake bottom section and uncovered a fully loaded 9-mm Beretta.

He heard Markov yell, “What?” And then shout at whoever was on the other end of the phone, “The amount is what it says on the fax. One hundred sixteen million, four hundred twenty-seven thousand.” Markov rushed over to the computer screen to read out the rest of the numbers. He leaned down to look at the screen. He moved the cursor and clicked enter. For a moment, he remained absolutely motionless, and then he slowly straightened up.

A calm had suddenly come over him. What was happening, couldn't be happening. He slowly and precisely said to the bank officer at the other end of the phone, “Who am I speaking to?”

Markov listened.

“All right Mr. Beloit.” Markov checked his watch. “Less than five minutes ago there was precisely one hundred sixteen million, four hundred twenty-seven thousand, one hundred seventy-nine U.S. dollars in that account. I want you to begin tracing where it went. Do not leave the bank until you find it, or until I call you back.”

Markov cut the cell call and turned to Crane. He said very calmly, “You know, Alan, I was actually going to let you live.”

 

81

Alex Liebowitz slapped the enter key for the last time and closed his eyes. The exhaustion crashed down on him. He realized his jaws were so tight that he had to slowly open his mouth wide, close it and open it a few times. He tried to take a deep breath and couldn't. The tension had stiffened and immobilized him. Even if he had wanted to, he knew he wouldn't be able to do anything on his computer for some time.

“That's it,” he said. “I gotta figure you have at least a half-hour head start, minimum. More likely a couple of hours. How many accounts do you have left to close behind me?”

“Three,” answered Olivia.

“Okay,” said Beck. He grabbed the back of Alex's desk chair and slowly wheeled him away from the computer keyboard. He gently lifted Alex onto his feet and said, “Go sleep. Nobody else could have done that. It's over.”

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.