Need You Now

44

T raffic out of the city was worse than usual, and Barber was stuck in a limousine that was barely moving. He would have preferred to make the phone call from his home, but there was no telling when that would be. He raised the soundproof partition between him and the driver, then dialed from memory on a special encrypted line to the West Wing of the White House.

Barber had first met Brett Woods at Saxton Silvers, when they were making their mark and earning tons of money as young bond traders at what was then the premier investment bank on Wall Street. They were friends but highly competitive, not just in their work but in thousand-dollar side bets on everything from whether the next unescorted woman to walk into the bar would be blond or brunette to which drop of rain clinging to the window outside their trading floor would be the first to trickle from top to bottom. The twentysomething cowboys eventually grew up, and the last two decades had seen them in and out of public service, though on very different tracks. Barber worked his way up in Treasury, eventually reaching the number two post. Woods parlayed his international business skills into matters of state, serving as ambassador to Turkey, then deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and finally national security advisor. Woods probably had the most solid business background of any national security advisor since Frank Carlucci in the Reagan administration, and both Woods and Barber had been savvy enough to cash out of Saxton Silvers before the subprime crisis drove the bank into receivership. Some said Barber was jealous of his old friend for snagging such a prestigious White House appointment. Others acknowledged that Barber’s position was one that his friend could never have attained-that it had been hard enough to secure Senate confirmation for Woods’ ambassadorship to Turkey, and that more recent controversy had virtually ensured he could never be named deputy secretary of the Treasury, or anything else that required confirmation by the Senate.

“I have a meeting with Mongoose later tonight,” Barber said into the telephone.

“Nothing has changed,” said Woods. “Until we eliminate the threat, it’s business as usual.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that until you hear otherwise, he’s got our backs to the wall. Give him what he wants.”

“He wants two billion dollars.”

“Once upon a time, that was a lot of money.”

“You’re missing my point. He wants Robledo ’s two billion dollars.”

“Better it goes to Mongoose than back to Robledo.”

“That money is gone . The Gerry Collins-to-Lilly Scanlon pipeline is a dead end. She doesn’t know squat. I’ve tried everything, even pitting her against her boyfriend-which backfired, to say the least. It’s time to face facts: Gerry Collins scammed Robledo and us . You’ve heard the tape.”

Barber was talking about the recorded conversation of Gerry Collins pleading with Robledo for his life after Mongoose had been shot on the boat. The yacht, taken from a drug lord in a forfeiture proceeding and commissioned for use in Operation BAQ, was fully wired for eavesdropping.

“Yes, I’ve heard the tape,” said Woods.

“I haven’t been with the bank long, but it’s been long enough to confirm that Collins wasn’t bluffing when he said that Robledo’s money never went to Cushman, that he’d stashed it all away. He brought in Robledo’s money, just like he was supposed to, but he didn’t funnel it to Cushman. He used Lilly Scanlon-made her, Robledo, and us think she was part of the pipeline to Cushman-but he moved the money offshore.”

“Do your job, Joe.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It may have been pressure from Mongoose that made us find a place for you in BOS management, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea. You’re inside. Find the money.”

“I can’t! It looks like Collins took that information to the grave.”

“Forensic accounting can do wonders. Unwind it.”

“There’s no way. Collins used hawalas . Southeast Asia hawalas , as best I can tell. There’s no paper trail.”

Barber didn’t have to elaborate. For all the politically correct rhetoric about the value and legitimacy of the informal “nonbanking system” that operates across the globe in the Islamic world, even some Muslim countries had made hawalas illegal because of the way they allowed money to “move” without actually moving, without any paper trail, without any way for law enforcement to detect money laundering. The national security advisor knew better than anyone that hawalas were much more than an efficient way for taxi drivers in Manhattan to send funds back to their family in Pakistan.

“Shit,” said Woods.

“We’re teetering on disaster,” said Barber.

“Don’t get all Chicken Little on me.”

“We’re in a situation where no one can trace the money, but Robledo has seen a redacted version of my memo identifying Lilly Scanlon and the bank’s Singapore office as Treasury’s best lead.”

“How do you know he’s seen it?”

“Mongoose told me that he sent it to him. That was his first threat: play ball, or next time I send the full decrypted version of your memo and blow the lid off Operation BAQ.”

There was silence on the line. Then the NSA spoke, his tone beyond serious. “The fallout would be bad enough if the American public were to find out that its government knew Cushman was running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme but let it happen.”

“No one understood the scope of Cushman’s fraud when we formulated Operation BAQ. Sixty billion dollars still sounds like a fantasy world. Our estimates were one-tenth that amount.”

“There are all kinds of excuses,” said Woods. “No one expected Cushman to kill himself before the feds could swoop down and recover at least some money for the innocent investors. No one anticipated that Cushman would collapse at a time when the entire world economy was in crisis and the financial system itself was teetering on the brink of ruin.”

“Those are all true statements,” said Barber.

“This isn’t about the truth. What do you suppose a special congressional oversight committee is going to say about those excuses when it comes out that a certain deputy secretary of the Treasury and the president’s national security advisor not only knew about Cushman but actually wanted him to collapse, in furtherance of Operation BAQ?”

Hearing the NSA ask the question aloud had conveyed the gravity of the situation. “Go to jail,” said Barber, “go directly to jail.”

“Exactly,” said Woods. “So, we need to deal with the problem at hand. At this point, Lilly Scanlon is at risk.”

“Let’s not mince words,” said Barber. “Robledo is going to kill her if she doesn’t come up with that money. And Mongoose is going public with Operation BAQ if I don’t deliver it to him.”

“So it’s either us or Lilly Scanlon.”

“Knock off the sarcasm. People have already died over this. The money is gone .”

“Fix it.”

“How do you expect me to come up with that kind of money?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Weren’t you one of the geniuses over at Treasury who decided to give BOS about eight billion dollars in stimulus money? Maybe you can go to the board of directors and claw back the bonuses they paid to themselves.”

“Bite me, all right?”

“Just find the money somewhere and give Mongoose what he wants.”

“Then what is your decision on Lilly Scanlon?”

“Whatever happens there is not our fault. It was Gerry Collins who identified her as his point person, not us.”

“But I put her name in the memo. I’m not exaggerating here: Robledo will kill her if he doesn’t get his money. He may kill her boyfriend, too.”

“I’ve said it before, and I don’t think I can be any clearer about this: Robledo can’t get his money back.”

“Then neutralize Robledo. Or put him in jail.”

“If Robledo is out of the picture, we’ll never find out who his funders are. Phase two of Operation BAQ fails.”

“So you’re saying…”

“The bureau is already on board with this. In fact, it’s already taken care of. I think you know what I’m saying.”

The NSA wished him luck. The call was over-and, yes, Barber knew what he was saying:

Lilly Scanlon and Patrick Lloyd were on their own.