Viking Bay (8 page)

Kay remembered Tanaka, a tall, good-looking guy who seemed like he might be fun.

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“Well, he said if I wanted to and if you agreed, I could probably skip my senior year and go to college. He graduated from Duke and has some pull with the school. In fact, he comes from a really rich family and they donate a lot to Duke; I don't know why he's teaching at a high school. Anyway, he said if I spent the rest of this year on a tailored curriculum, he's about ninety percent sure they'll admit me next year, and they'll give me some kind of partial scholarship. He knows I want to be a doctor, and these days it takes about twelve years with pre-med, med school, internship and residency programs, and he says I'm just wasting my time in high school. He said the sooner I can get through the pre-med stuff and into medical school, the better. And he's not doing this just for me; he's working with four other kids who want to go into medicine or medical research. The thing is, I'd be leaving home, of course, and Duke's pretty pricey even with a partial scholarship.”

Kay was so relieved that Jessica wasn't pregnant, she almost blurted out:
Thank God!

“Hey, if that's what you want,” Kay said, “then I'm all for it. And as for the money, don't worry about it. I'm making a decent salary and we can take out a loan if we need to. Whatever. We can afford it, and you can't pass up Duke. It's one of the top schools in the country.” Actually, the only thing Kay knew about Duke was that they produced great basketball teams. “But do you think it's the right thing to do from a social standpoint? You know, going to school with kids older than you, not having the whole, uh, high school experience.”

“They'd be like
one
year older than me,” Jessica said. “It's not like I'd be some ten-year-old savant on campus.”

“Yeah, well, that's true.” Plus, she was always bragging about how mature Jessica was, and now she was acting like if she skipped the senior prom she'd turn into an agoraphobic wacko.

Kay couldn't help it, but another thought occurred to her. If her daughter was in North Carolina, living in a dorm, Kay could go back to living by herself and she wouldn't have to worry about explaining things to Jessica when the Callahan Group sent her someplace like Afghanistan. Or when she wanted to invite a man, like Eli Dolan, over to spend the night. God, she was a lousy mother.

In an attempt to do the right thing, as opposed to the selfish thing, she said, “Okay. But I need to talk to Tanaka myself and make sure this really is the best thing for you.”

“Sure,” Jessica said. “I'll let him know and we'll set something up. You going to be around next week?”

“Yeah. At least I think so.” She was fairly sure she'd be in town because she'd be prepping for Ara Khan's visit—unless they decided to do the prepping in New York, in which case she wouldn't be in town. She'd ask Mercer about that tomorrow.

“Would you mind taking care of the dishes?” Jessica asked.

“Hey, of course,” Kay said. “You cooked.”

“Thanks. Brian and I are going to a show.”

Huh.
She wondered if they were really going to a show. She wondered if that horny little bastard's parents were out of the house and they were planning to go to his place to fool around. But instead of saying what she was thinking, she said, “What are you going to see?”

“The new Woody Allen.”

“Woody's a whiny little wimp,” Kay said.

“He's a genius,” Jessica said.

“Yeah, right, a genius who . . . Aw, forget it. You just make sure you're home at a decent hour. You got school tomorrow.” Kay knew that was a totally unnecessary thing to say to her overachiever daughter. What she'd really wanted to say was:
You come right back after that show, young lady, because if that boy knocks you up, I'm going to shoot him.

—

KAY CLEANED UP
the kitchen, then unlocked her briefcase and pulled out the background material Anna Mercer had given her on Ara Khan.

The Callahan Group had done a lot of research on Ara, had looked at every record they could find, and talked to over thirty people who had known her. The picture that emerged during Ara's high school and college years was: normal girl, even normal Western girl.

Ara wasn't religious—she never attended a mosque while she was abroad, nor had anyone ever seen her praying—and she appeared to like the things that most young girls liked: fashion, movies, music, and boys. While attending high school in France, she'd been chaperoned by teachers at the school she attended but was able to travel extensively throughout Europe. She skied in the Alps every year, and when she went to the beaches on the Costa del Sol, she wore a bikini. Although she socialized with boys her own age, there was no evidence the Group could find that she'd ever had a lover while in France. Nor was there any evidence that she'd been particularly close to anyone, male or female, while in Europe.

Things changed in college, primarily due to her roommate at NYU—Carolyn Harris. Carolyn, as Callahan had said, was a bit of a wild thing. She partied a lot and dated a lot—meaning she slept around a lot—got drunk fairly often, occasionally did a little recreational dope, and in general seemed to go through life having a good time while managing to maintain a C average at NYU.

She introduced Ara to New York: shopping, after-hours clubs, booze, and men. Harris's wealthy Connecticut family also appeared to have adopted Ara, as she spent a lot of weekends and holidays at their estate in Connecticut. Carolyn Harris's mother told one of Callahan's investigators that she thought of Ara as a daughter and as a sister to Carolyn.

Ara, either due to her background or just plain common sense, was more restrained than Carolyn Harris. It appeared that quite often Ara was the one who managed to get Harris safely back to the dorm after Harris had imbibed too much. In college, Ara had sexual relationships with at least two men. She dated one of them—a now-married stockbroker in Boston—most of her sophomore year. The second man she dated for only four months but slept with him. Kay had no idea how Callahan's investigators had obtained this information. Also, unlike Harris, Ara was a serious student and had almost a straight-A average. She didn't join any campus organizations but frequently attended lectures on political topics when lecturers appeared in New York.

Kay had to admit that she was beginning to develop a grudging admiration for Ara's father, Sahid Khan. He may have been a corrupt thug, but in a country where women were often married off at the age of thirteen, where schools teaching girls were bombed by the Taliban, where women were expected to be completely subservient to men and hide their bodies in burkas, Sahid Khan had sent his daughter out into the world to become a sophisticated, highly educated young woman.

When Ara returned to Afghanistan at the age of twenty-four, things changed. Dramatically. She put aside the clothes she wore in college
and dressed as most modern Afghan businesswomen do—in long modest dresses and with a scarf covering her hair. She didn't wear a burka or a veil. She immersed herself in her father's business of governing Ghazni Province and, as Callahan had told Kay, assumed the role of his chief advisor. She wasn't dating anyone, although a member of the French Embassy in Kabul—a young man from a good Parisian family who had known Ara in high school—would show up every so often for dinner at the Khans' house, but they were never allowed to be alone together. Kay felt sorry for Ara Khan. It sounded as if she was leading an incredibly drab, stressful existence for a young woman of twenty-six.

She wondered if Ara had any dreams of her own.

The final item in the file was a copy of a 2010 article from the
New York Times
written by a guy named James Risen. The article discussed the vast mineral deposits that existed in Afghanistan and the difficulties associated with extracting those minerals. According to Risen, the Taliban might very well attempt to gain control of the minerals or, because of the rampant corruption in the central government, a few well-connected oligarchs could gain control. The article noted that Afghanistan had mining laws that had never been tested and how “endless fights” could erupt between the central government in Kabul and the leaders in the mineral-rich provinces.

The thing Kay found most interesting in the article was that the Chinese had been caught trying to bribe the Afghan minister of mines with thirty million dollars to gain control of copper mining. So it appeared that what Callahan was trying to do had been tried before—and there was a lot of dangerous competition.

11
|
Alpha knocked on Finley's apartment door in Brooklyn, not concerned that it was almost midnight. Finley would be awake; Finley was almost always awake.

Alpha had found Rodger Finley in a database at the Pentagon, did some preliminary research, and then hired an agency in New York to fill out his profile. He had double doctorates in math and computer science, the math degree alone making him a weirdo. In every high school algebra class there is maybe one kid in the entire class who thinks imaginary numbers make sense—and Finley would have been that kid.

People who get advanced degrees in mathematics used to seek employment primarily with universities so they could spend all day playing with numbers and no one would demand that the playing result in something useful. Some went to work for places like the NSA where they needed math wizards to break codes—code breaking was very math- and computer-intensive—and others went to work for high-tech companies. The companies would stick the geeks down in a basement lab just
hoping
they'd come up with something that would turn a profit. All they could do was hope, because nobody could really communicate with them and they had a tendency to work on whatever interested them.

These days, however, the place where a lot of math freaks ended up was Wall Street. These people are known as
quants
—an unattractive abbreviation for “quantitative analysts”—although
quant
better captures the personality and often the appearance of those who bear the
title. Wall Street firms use their quants to develop programs containing algorithms that can buy and sell stocks and commodities in nanoseconds. The Wall Street guys aren't smart enough to understand the algorithms—all they understand is that if you can buy and sell at the speed of light, you can make millions. Some people still remember May 6, 2010: the day the Dow dropped a thousand points because one of those algorithms had a little glitch in it.

And that's where Rodger Finley ended up—as a quant on Wall Street.

Fortunately—for Alpha, that is—Finley was arrested when he was seventeen; by then he was already a junior in college. He was arrested because he'd hacked his way into a DOD database, which was why they had a file on him at the Pentagon. Finley did it just because it seemed like a fun thing to do. His arrest didn't result in a conviction, however; it resulted instead in an immediate job offer from the NSA after he graduated. But then a silver-tongued recruiter lured Finley to Goldman Sachs.

Finley made a small fortune at Goldman Sachs—the quants were well paid—but he didn't make anywhere near the salary of the big boys at the top. Then one day he stopped showing up for work. He'd become bored making money for Goldman Sachs. Goldman fired him after they hadn't seen him for a couple of months, and when they did, they pointed out the noncompete clause in a contract he hadn't bothered to read and which kept him from going to work for another Wall Street firm for two years.

Finley didn't seem to care that he was unemployed, however. The agency Alpha hired said he spent almost twenty-four hours a day in his apartment playing on his computers. He was a nut, but a talented nut.

—

FINLEY FINALLY OPENED
the door after Alpha banged on it with a fist for almost two minutes. Finley was six-foot-one and skinny, looking like he
weighed maybe a hundred thirty pounds. His nose was barely long enough to provide a perch for heavy, black-framed glasses, and greasy dark hair hung down to his shoulders. When he'd worked for Goldman, Finley had always worn his hair short, but Alpha didn't think he'd changed his hairstyle; Finley was just too preoccupied with doing whatever people like him did to go to a barber. He was barefoot—his toenails needed to be severely clipped—and dressed in gray sweatpants and a black
Star Trek
T-shirt. The T-shirt said
Live Long and Prosper.

Alpha considered the T-shirt a good omen: Living long and prospering was the plan.

“Who are you? What do you want? I'm busy,” Finley said.

“I have a job for you, Rodger, one that pays very well.”

“I don't need a job. Go away.”

“Rodger, you were fired by Goldman Sachs almost two years ago and you haven't drawn a paycheck since then. You have nineteen thousand dollars left in your bank account and your rent and utilities add up to twenty-seven hundred dollars a month. I don't know what you pay for food.”

“How do you know how much . . .”

“In six months, you're going to be completely broke.”

Alpha could tell Finley was actually shocked to hear how little money he had left. All his bills were paid by automatic withdrawals from a checking account, and apparently Finley hadn't been paying any attention to how much money was going out. But instead of admitting that he was on his way to homelessness, he said, “Hey, if I need a job, I'll find one.”

“But that's my point, Rodger: You don't need to find one. I'm willing to pay you two million dollars if you can do what I need you to do.”

“Two million?”

“I'm glad to see that I've finally gotten your attention. But I'm not going to stand out here in the hall talking to you.”

Finley hesitated. “Fine, come in, but I'm not promising anything.”

Finley's living room looked like a cross between a video arcade and a launch control room at NASA. There were three large-screen TVs and the controllers for various video games sat on the floor, cords and cables running in every direction. The floor looked like a snake convention. On tables around the room were computers and monitors and dozens of gadgets with blinking lights, and Alpha had no idea what half the equipment did. In the middle of all the clutter was a red La-Z-Boy recliner, more or less centered between the television sets.

Finley pulled over a chair on rollers that was near all the computers and gestured for Alpha to take a seat. He plopped down in the La-Z-Boy, sitting sideways, his skinny legs dangling over the arm of the chair.

“So what's the job?” he said.

Alpha told him—and then set the hook. “The problem, even as bright as you're supposed to be, is that I'm not sure you can do it. I'm not sure anyone can.” Alpha knew that for Finley the challenge was more important than the money.

“Is that right?” Finley said, displaying the ego and arrogance he was known for.

“Yes. And the computers involved have the best security systems available today.”

“I can do it,” Finley said.

“Well, I doubt it. But if you can prove to me that you can, and if the operation is successful, your cut will be two million. Then you can sit in this loft for the next decade doing whatever it is you do.”

“I can do it,” Finley said again. His fingers were twitching now, as if he were already tapping on a keyboard.

“Anyway, that's the hard part of the job. After we have the money, I'm going to want you to route it to several bank accounts and no one must be able to trace it.”

“That's easy, too,” Finley said.

It turned out the job wasn't
that
easy. It took Finley almost three weeks, and during that time he slept no more than two hours a night. By the time he finished, he'd lost ten pounds he couldn't afford to lose, and the next time Alpha saw him he had this weird look in his eyes, like some wacko-mystic in a state of religious ecstasy. But he succeeded.

Step one was complete.