Dmitri Ustinov flopped down in his worn office chair. He stuffed a sugary cruller into his mouth as he waited for his computer to boot up. His bad luck to have to ride up the elevator with his sissy British boss.

When the icons on the desktop blinked into place, he looked around the office, then clicked the mouse button to check his e-mail. Sure enough, there was one there from Roman. The message was an innocuous recap of an uneventful weekend trip to the Hamptons. He clicked the button to send the message to the printer on his desk, then deleted it from his in-box and mail server and erased all traces of it from the hard drive on his computer.

Once again, he glanced around the office space to see if anyone might be watching him. He grimaced and mentally kicked himself for being so skittish. The paranoia of his boyhood education in Moscow was imprinted on Dmitri Ustinov’s psyche. He was still certain that shadowy forces monitored all e-mail, that some all-seeing someone was always watching him, spying on every move he made. The mere fact that he received an encrypted e-mail would alert whoever watched that he had something important to hide. It was much better to conceal everything by hiding nothing, by conducting his business in broad daylight where it would attract the least amount of unwanted attention.

With another series of mouse clicks and an eight-digit password, Ustinov brought to life the accounting program on his computer. He converted each letter of the e-mail to a number and then typed in the number sequence backward. A macro churned away for a second, and a ten-figure total appeared in the answer block. Ustinov memorized the number, shredded the e-mail, and closed the program without saving his work.

Yet again, he gave a fleeting look around the office, making sure no one had observed his actions, no matter how innocent they might have seemed. The telephone next to his elbow jangled, startling him. He snatched the offending device before it could shriek a second time and jammed it to his ear. “Ustinov.”

“Dmitri, morning. This is Chuck Gruver over at the New York Stock Exchange. We’ve been working with your people to test some of those new modules for post-trade clearing.”

Ustinov had been expecting this call. He leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, Chuck. Is there some problem? Functionality not working out?”