Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [149]
By that time, the Syrian and Pawnhill had long since banked their profits, laundering them through the accounts at Middle Bay, and moving them so many times, through Caroline’s maze of offshore accounts and shell companies in various quarters of the world, that they were untraceable.
Even Pawnhill had had no idea of the scope of the calamity the CDO frenzy would cause. In the aftermath, when the American financial system was on the brink of collapse, when the knives had come out and culprits were being hunted, it had been Pawnhill’s job to keep Gemini Holdings and its now nonexistent subsidiaries from being discovered by Safe Banking Systems, a task far more difficult than dealing with the inept probing of the federal authorities. This was where Pawnhill had earned his money. He’d kept the Syrian off the PEP lists and he’d provided Gemini with an impregnable safe harbor. He was just beginning to accept the Syrian’s congratulations on a job well done when he’d become aware of Annika Dementieva.
She was the joker in the deck, an element he could not have accounted for because he had known nothing about her toxic relationship with Xhafa. The partnership had troubled him from the first—adding another personality to the mix was always a risk, and especially one as volatile as Xhafa’s—but the Syrian had brushed aside his objections. “I need this man,” the Syrian had told him. “His ambition has made him into the visible one, the leader of a new international organization. And he’s perfect because his terrorists are also revolutionaries fighting for the freedom of Albanians inside Macedonia. It’s a beautiful setup. He’s seen as a hero to others outside Islam, which makes him invaluable. And, if anything should go wrong, he’ll take the heat, while you and I melt away into the shadows.”
Pawnhill was certain that Dementieva had become aware of the Syrian’s activities through her investigation of Arian Xhafa. But it was only in the last week that he had come upon an ambiguous and seemingly innocuous bit of data. Following it had proved immensely difficult and it had taken him three days to crack. What he discovered had floored him. In some way he could not fathom, Dementieva and Henry Holt Carson were communicating with one another. Curious enough, but what had put the fear of God in him was that the substance of their communication was Middle Bay Bancorp. This intel was so new that he’d not yet had a chance to bring it to the Syrian’s attention. He knew he needed to do so as quickly as possible, but he also knew his boss wouldn’t take it well at all. Therefore, he needed a piece of good news to offset the bad.
He thought for a time while he sipped his coffee, which was black and strong, the way he liked it. The recovery of a copy of the account data from Billy Warren would both appease and please the Syrian. Pawnhill’s discovery of Carson and Dementieva discussing Middle Bay was an extraordinary stroke of luck. But just the fact that they were discussing Middle Bay at all had set off deep-level warning bells inside his head. Though he had long ago used a number of tried-and-true methods to put M. Bob Evrette in his hip pocket, there were always forces outside the bank he might have to contend with one day. For this and many other reasons he had aggressively pursued the forensic accounting assignment with InterPublic. He had done business with them before—another one of his fail-safe measures should he have felt the need to move accounts to a larger bank.
When the waitress passed by, he asked for a slice of devil’s food cake. It was now possible to take a step back and see the InterPublic buyout of Middle Bay in a different light. The possibility that Carson suspected both the existence of the accounts