Midnight In Madrid

stayed on small matters until the food arrived and, not by surprise, turned out to be spectacular.

Peter lowered his tones and switched back to English when the conversation turned serious again. “Let me bring you up to date on The Pieta of Malta,” he said. “Our own intelligence knew the trail of a transaction involving the bird. Black market sale: $1,250,000 from the sale of a stolen piece of art. The physical transaction of the artwork was made in Switzerland with the money returning to Spain by electronic transfer.”

“So someone paid to have it stolen?”

“Someone paid a lot to have it stolen,” Peter said. “Which brings us to motivations.”

“Arguably it could have been a private collector,” she said. “One of those immensely wealthy people who get their charge merely out of possessing the item. Or it could have been stolen by people who wanted to raise money. But if the money returned to Spain, what was the purpose of it?”

“Here we get into the notion of artwork financing criminal activity or terror activity. And the latter would most likely be aimed at America or Americans,” he said. “Listen, another agent from my agency went to Switzerland to intercept the transaction. The agent carried five checks on the Bank of Hong Kong to complete the transaction.”

“And?”

“He was murdered when he was supposed to retrieve the carving from an old monastery,” he explained. “Then his body was dumped in the mountains. Concurrent with his disappearance, the checks were cashed through an Arab bank in Ri’yad. And as I mentioned, much of the money eventually came back to Spain by electronic transfer. It was laundered first through Zurich, then through a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

Alex picked up on the explanation.

“So whoever was brokering the deal had your agent killed, took his money, then sent the pieta in another direction. Perhaps to the Middle East. Or at least, that’s what we speculate.”

“You could put forth that theory,” Peter said.

“Do you put forth that thesis?” she asked.

“Most of it. Or variations on it. It’s the foundation of what I’m working with.”

“Bad way to do business,” she said, harkening back to those who had brokered the sale of the stolen art.

“Yes. It’s a very shortsighted way to do business,” said Chang with a certain iciness. “Selling the same stolen art work twice. Or at least twice. It leaves everyone unhappy and puts in motion some very unfortunate repercussions.”

“I can imagine,” Alex said.

“It was enough reason for me to fly to Switzerland to arrange for the agent’s body to be sent home to China,” he said. He paused very slightly. “While I was there, I picked up where the other agent left off and embarked myself on the trail of the bird and the transactions involving it. How’s your tuna?”

“It’s fine.”

“How’s the wine?”

“You’re consuming the same meal as I am. Both are excellent. Why are you changing the subject?”

“I’m not.”

“When were you in Switzerland?”

“You are a lady tiger, aren’t you? Persistent and not easy to distract from a line of inquiry.”

“I can be. When were you in Switzerland?”

“I was in Switzerland four days ago. I knew you were to be assigned to the case,” Chang said. “But I had no authorization to make contact with you until I consulted with both my people and the Americans. But I also knew you were potentially a target.”

“How could you have known that?” she asked. “You would have had to have left Switzerland before I knew I was assigned to the case.”

“You’re smart,” he said. “I’ll give you five seconds to think about it. I doubt if you’ll need all five.”

She used three of them. Then, “Ah. Federov!” she said.

“Correct. I knew you were going to be assigned, because when I passed information about the brokerage of stolen artwork along to the CIA in Rome, Federov’s name came up. Mark McKinnon saw the name and knew you had previous dealings with the Russian. So Mark contacted me before he contacted you. That’s also obviously why the opposition, whoever they are, knew you were to be assigned. And that’s why they drew a target on your beautiful head.”

“But backtrack for a second. How did you find the Federov connection?”

“I hacked the computer of a certain Swiss businessman.”

“You what?”

“I hacked into his computer and downloaded all the contents into mine.”

“His computer wasn’t coded?” she asked.

“Not very efficiently.” Chang answered. He laughed. “I’m Asian so I’m good at those things. The Switzer was a dumb old white guy as far as security software went. It wasn’t much of a challenge. And his laptop was like a little box of gold,” Chang said. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about tonight.”

“So talk,” she said, only slightly distracted by the best tuna filet she had ever encountered.

“I also recovered the banking records that showed exactly into what account the checks from China had been deposited. Normally, the trace on a route of a check deposited in Switzerland will hit security roadblocks and we’d need the help of the Swiss authorities to follow the money all the way back to the deposit.”

“Usually that cooperation is forthcoming,” she noted.

“Yes. But one is always at risk of certain bankers alerting the opposition by letting the depositor know that questions were being asked. So I hacked into the system for the complete records of that account,” Chang said. “I followed the money.”

Her fork stopped in mid-motion. “You hacked into the entire Swiss banking system?” she asked.

“Well, just one of the big banks. That was enough this time. Okay, I needed some help from one of our Hong Kong-trained techies. So she flew over from London for a day and got the job done. It’s like a Trojan Horse virus via microwaves on the bank’s main computer. If we know what account to connect with, we can drop our virus in and monitor transactions, past and current. From there we can monitor any other account that receives or disperses a transaction from the first account. Then the Trojan Horse self-destructs leaving no trace.”

“Do the Swiss know you have this capability?”

“Some of the banks do,” he said. “Sometimes they ask us for some help figuring out what their depositors are up to. One dirty hand washes the other.”

She shook her head in amazement. Tens of thousands of depositors with numbered accounts wouldn’t have found Peter’s tale anywhere nearly as amusing.

“Anyway,” Chang continued, “the money was dispersed to other accounts within minutes after it had cleared. One of the accounts was in Spain, two were in Saudi Arabia. We followed the international routing numbers and sent our Trojan Horse after it.”

“So that would link the people who were fencing The Pieta of Malta to people in the Middle East as well as Spain,” she said.

“It would appear that way,” Peter Chang said. “But the first deposit was closely followed by another deposit and a similar transfer,” he said. “For the same amount of money. And then the second transfer dispersed the money almost in the same manner, except there was fifty thousand dollars siphoned off, which went to a bank in Athens that specializes in trade with the Mideast.”

“Did you get names off the accounts?”

“Not real ones. No surprise there. The trail dead-ends into fake passports and IDs. Very professional stuff, by the way.”

Thinking it backward, she said, “Athens, huh?”

“Athens. Yes. Why is that significant?”

“When my Italian buddy had a needle stuck in his butt the other night,” she said, “he said the people who did it were speaking Greek. Maybe that’s nothing. Maybe it suggests we’re on the right track.”

“Maybe. And maybe not,” Peter Chang said. “Look, my brief only addresses the sale to China, my