The First Billion

The first roadblock was set up one hundred meters north of Silber, Goldi, and Grimm's office at the intersection of Rue du Rhône and Place les Halles. The second was erected fifty meters south, at an intersection not visible from the silver and steel office building. Plainclothes policemen filtered down the busy streets, quietly demanding pedestrians to leave the area, in a few cases forcibly escorting them off the streets. A crisis headquarters was established in the shopping gallery below the Confederation Centre, the office complex that housed the Geneva Stock Exchange. Two armored personnel carriers painted a royal blue arrived. The back doors opened. Twenty-four policemen from the elite Division D'Intervention Rapide, or DIR, of the Geneva Police Department, clad in full battle gear, jumped to the ground, forming into two squads and moving out toward their target. Snipers scrambled up stairwells in adjacent buildings and established shooting platforms with a clear line of sight of Silber, Goldi, and Grimm's lobby.

Watching the activity unfurl around him, Detective Sergeant Silvio Panetti stroked his mustache. "Mince," he whispered to himself. "C'est sérieux."

It had been simple to track down Mr. John J. Gavallan. Lussy-sur-Morges had but two hundred twenty residents. One by one he had read their names to Mr. Howell Dodson of the FBI. Dodson recognized Jean-Jacques Pillonel's name immediately. A team was sent to the man's chalet. Pillonel's wife did not know where her husband had gone. Ten minutes later, a patrol car spotted Gavallan's rental on the Rue du Confédération, a block from Silber, Goldi, and Grimm. The rest Panetti figured out for himself.

A walkie-talkie near him crackled. "In place," said a crisp voice.

"Entendu," replied Captain Henri L'Hunold, commander of the DIR. "Await my signal."

***

Stepping into the document storage room, Jean-Jacques Pillonel took up his tale where he had left off in the car ten minutes earlier.

"As I said, it is part of our job as fiduciaries to keep a permanent record of our customers' accounts. This means keeping copies of the bank confirmations showing all monies that flow into and out of them: every deposit, every wire transfer, every cash withdrawal."

"But you're not a bank yourself?" asked Cate.

"Good Lord, no. But as their accountants we require the confirmations to perform the audits of our customers' accounts. We scan them immediately and transfer them to hard drive. Every month, we download the new confirmations onto our customers' private CDs."

The three were snaking through aisles of chest-high filing cabinets colored a wan yellow. Pillonel was their leader, and he moved like an automaton through the metallic maze, drawing first one CD, then another, his destinations memorized long ago.

"What was Kirov's game?" Gavallan asked. "Didn't he want to pay the tax man his due?"

"Forget the tax man," said Cate. "Kirov didn't even plan on giving the money to Novastar. As far as he was concerned, Novastar's revenues were his, and he made sure they didn't turn up anywhere on the company's ledgers."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," cautioned Pillonel. "Once Kirov won the auction for Novastar, he transferred the company's headquarters from Moscow to Geneva. Moscow was too parochial, he said; an international airline needed an international presence. He asked me to set up a holding company for his forty-nine percent stake in the airline. We were happy to oblige. The company is called Futura. It is domiciled in Lausanne."

"Is Kirov the sole shareholder?" Cate demanded.

"No. There is a second man. His name is Dashamirov. Aslan Dashamirov. You know him?"

Gavallan and Cate said they didn't.

"He is trouble, this man." Pillonel offered a secret smile. "He is Chechen. Not so polished as Mr. Kirov. From the bandit country. Anyway, at the same time as we opened Futura for Mr. Kirov, he asked us to set up a second company, this one offshore in the Dutch Antilles- Curaçao, I believe. That company is named Andara. Now of course we all know why he did this, but I was surprised at his audacity. First, he instructs all of Novastar's foreign offices to transfer their revenues to Futura, instead of to the company's old accounts in Moscow. This means all the money Novastar earns from sales of plane tickets made in Los Angeles or Rio or Hong Kong come to Switzerland."

"I have a feeling we're getting to the good part," said Gavallan, giving Cate a fateful glance.

"If you mean the part that concerns Mercury, you are right," said Pillonel. "From Futura, Kirov would transfer the money into Mercury's accounts here in Geneva. But only at certain times during the year, and just briefly- one day in, the next day out. He timed it so that Mercury's quarterly bank statements showed the effect of the transfer. Usually, the inflows increased Mercury's revenues by around thirty percent."