Among thieves

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 co

When they discussed how to get that money out of the Cayman bank, Olivia told Beck that traders ru

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.