“We would fight the suits, obviously,” said Tarullo. “Maybe we could talk national security with the judges, but I doubt it would work.”
“So basically I’m screwed. That’s what you’re telling me. Either I go to court and run the risk of a ridiculously long prison sentence on multiple fraud charges, or I make a deal for a short sentence, but I still get bankrupted with damages from civil suits that I can’t pay because I can’t work in finance again. Is that it, more or less?”
“Hey, Tom, it is what it is. Not a great situation, I admit. Should you take the deal? Depends on your tolerance for getting ass-fucked for the next thirty-two years at Brixton.”
Perkins put his palms to his head, so that they covered his eyes and most of his face. He murmured to himself as he thought about his options. When he removed his hands, he was smiling. It was uncanny, a big grin, as if he had been released from his cell and sent home.
“No fucking way. That’s what I’ve decided. Let them try to prosecute me. You know what? They won’t dare. They think they can nail me for stuff that happened before they got in deep. But I’m not going to play. This evidence is all tainted by the fact that I was involved in secret intelligence activities the CIA may be claiming don’t exist, but which they will never, ever allow to come out in open court. And the minute they ask the judge to go in camera to discuss secrets, I’ve made my point, I’ve won.”
“So you want to roll the dice?” asked Tarullo.
“Gambling is for suckers, Vince. This is a no-brainer. I’ve made my career knowing when to take risks and, honestly, it’s not even close in this case. These people are bluffing. They will fold. Mr. Gormley, tell the Crown Prosecution Service, ‘Thank you very much for the offer, and we’ll see you in court.’ But I promise you, it will never get there.”
“Bracing words, Mr. Perkins,” said the solicitor. “I will convey your message. I do hope you’re right.”
Perkins said he wanted a few words alone with his American attorney before they left. The prim British solicitor padded off down the hall to wait in the entryway.
Perkins leaned close to Tarullo and spoke as quietly as he could.
“This will work, Vince. You have to believe me.”
“If you say so, Tom. What do I know? I’m just your lawyer.”
Perkins lowered his voice another few decibels.
“I want you to do something for me. I want you to go see the CIA general counsel. Get all the records you can find of my accounts at FBS. Tell them that the CIA, or some spinoff somewhere, has been using these accounts to fund operations and using my firm as cover for its people. And I can prove it, if they make me. Will you do that?”
“Sure. I know the general counsel. He was an associate in my firm a long time ago. He told me I was all wet when I asked about Anthony Cronin a couple of days ago. But he’ll see me.”
“Tell him that what they’re doing is illegal, Vince. There is something called the ‘Anti-Deficiency Act.’ Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I do. I’m a lawyer. It means that government agencies can’t spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress. But how do you know?”
“I’ve been doing my homework. I’ve known I would need to break with these people, eventually. The point is, somebody has been using me and my firm to violate that law. That’s what they were doing, running a fund off the books to provide money for their operations. And I want you to tell the general counsel that if they do not back off, I am going to say this in open court in Britain, and they are going down!”
Perkins’s stage whisper had grown so loud the guard or anyone else listening could surely hear it. But he didn’t care.
Tarullo got up to leave. He gave Perkins a kiss on both cheeks, Italian-style, and the heavy body lumbered out the door.
Perkins leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. He put his feet up on the wooden table for a moment, savoring his act of defiance, but the guard pushed them away and ordered Perkins back to his cell.
40
The Eurostar arrivals hall at St. Pancras station was thick with well-dressed young men and women, their computer bags slung over their shoulders and rolling their luggage behind them. There was the faint sound of a thousand tiny wheels clicking across the floor as they busily sped off to their London destinations. They were bound for Euro-Britain, a nation of espresso bars and gourmet sandwich shops that seemed barely connected to the old country of dingy corridors and cigarette butts.
Sophie Marx was traveling on a new diplomatic passport, supplied by the embassy in Brussels, so she avoided the queue at Immigration. She took a black taxi to the Dorchester Hotel, where she had left her luggage in storage when she had decamped suddenly for Islamabad a week before. The doorman tipped his black top hat, and the concierge in his morning coat welcomed her “back home,” as if she’d been off sporting on the Cote d’Azur these past few days. Nothing in her appearance gave her away; she wore a pair of well-tailored slacks and her snug leather jacket and she did look, at a glance, like someone who belonged on a yacht rather than in a safe house.
Marx asked the man at the front desk for a simple room that would fit her new budget, but she was family now, and they gave her a big room with a four-poster double bed and windows that overlooked the park.
She rang Thomas Perkins’s numbers again when she got upstairs. She had been calling him for two days without success, at his office, home and cell numbers. It was evident that something bad had happened to him but she didn’t yet know what, and she blamed herself.
She unpacked her things, took a long shower and collapsed on the bed. She wanted to hide for a while, from the people who were pursuing her and from thoughts about the people she had placed in danger. She unhooked the chintz curtains that surrounded the bed and let them fall, so that she was enclosed in a doll’s house of floral print fabric and down pillows. She hugged a pillow tight against her chest, the way she had as a girl in her first weeks at boarding school, fighting the loneliness of separation from her crazy parents. Sleep came quickly; she was awakened ninety minutes later by the insistent ring of her cellular phone.
Marx fumbled for the handset, uncertain where she was in the dark of the bed. It was odd to hear the ring at all; so few people knew how to reach her. She looked at the number of the incoming caller; it was a London mobile phone she didn’t recognize, and she thought at first that it might be Thomas Perkins.
“Hello,” she answered. “Who is this?”
The answer was the clipped, emphatic and all too familiar voice of Jeffrey Gertz.
“It’s your boss. Or should I say, your former boss. I gather you’ve gone over to the parent company.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “You’re hazardous to my health.”
“I need to see you. We have to talk.”
“Wrong. We have nothing to talk about. You are a menace. I mean it. Don’t call again. Goodbye.”
She pressed the red button on the phone and ended the call. The phone rang again, twice, from the same number, and she let it roll over to voice mail both times. Ten minutes later, there was a call from a “private number,” not otherwise identified. She ignored that one, too.
Marx put on her jeans and black leather and walked the half dozen blocks across Mayfair to the handsome building that housed Alphabet Capital. It was a Friday afternoon and the pubs along the way were already crowded with merry-makers, spilling onto the sidewalks with their pints of beer and their wine coolers. As she threaded the crowds, several men offered to buy her a round.