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"You know what I mean. Your face. I am in no mood for it this morning." Ivanov lowered his big head into his hands and groaned.
"I might as well go by myself."
"That is a brilliant idea. Travel to the kidnapping capital of the Mediterranean by yourself so they can snatch you off the street and hold you for ransom. Brilliant!"
"Is it my fault that you stay out drinking and screwing until sunrise?"
"Don't start."
"I am half your age, and I can't keep up with you."
"You are half my size, too, so we're even."
"You need to slow down or there will be problems."
Ivanov's head snapped up. "Is that a threat?"
"No," Shvets said, shaking his head, with a pathetic disappointment in his boss. Why must my loyalty always be questioned? "I am talking about your health. You need to take some time off. Go someplace warm. Maybe come to Beirut with me."
"Beirut is a hellhole. It was once a great place ... not anymore. You will see."
"I heard it's coming back."
"Ha," Ivanov laughed. "Not the part where you'll be going. The famous Green Line looks like Leningrad in 1941. It's a bombed-out shell. Our friends are trying to reconstitute it before the Christians take it over. It is not a nice place."
Before Shvets could respond there was a knock on the office door. It was Pavel Sokoll, one of Ivanov's deputies, who worked exclusively on state security financial matters. And if his ghostly complexion was any hint, he was not here to bring glad tidings. "Sir," Sokoll's voice cracked a touch. It did that when he was afraid he was going to upset Ivanov. "We have a problem."
"What kind of problem, God dammit?"
Sokoll started to explain, and then stopped, and then started again when he realized there was no good way to spin the bad news. "We have certain accounts that we use to move money overseas. For our various activities, that is."
"I'm not an idiot, Sokoll. We have accounts all over the place. Which ones are you talking about?"
"The ones in Zurich ... specifically the ones"--he glanced at his notes--"at SBC." He closed the file and looked at his boss.
Ivanov glared at the pasty man. They had 138 accounts with the Swiss Bank Corporation. "Which accounts, dammit!"
Sokoll opened the file again. Rather than trying to read the numbers, which even he didn't understand, he reached across the desk and handed the paper to his boss.
Ivanov looked down at the list of accounts. There were six, and he was intimately familiar with whom they belonged to. "What am I supposed to learn from this? There is nothing. Just account numbers."
"Actually, sir"--Sokoll pointed nervously at the sheet--"on the far side those are the balances of each account."
Ivanov's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "This says these accounts are empty!"
"That's right, sir."
"How?" Ivanov yelled as he jumped to his feet.
"Swiss Interbank Clearing executed the order at nine-oh-one Zurich time this morning. The money was emptied out of these accounts electronically."
"I know how it works, you fucking moron, where did it go?"
"We don't know, sir."
&
nbsp; Ivanov made a fist, as if he might come over the desk and bash his deputy over the head. "Well, find out!"
